The Long Journey Home
by WENN9366
Summary: After a strange event, Fred is the only one who can see Lizzie. The journey for an answer leads them into Fred's past - one that he cannot remember, but will be forced to face.   Fred/Lizzie...eventually   *COMPLETE*
1. The Key

_During the last 10 minutes of Drop Dead Fred, we saw a different and deeper side of Fred - a Fred who was more mature than during most of the movie. I wanted to explore that part of his personality. This story is about Fred's past - a past which he cannot remember, but he will be forced to face.  
_

_This story is a crossover with Alice in Wonderland (2010) after Chapter 6 (but watching it is not necessary). The first chapter begins immediately after Fred disappears in the movie._

* * *

"_Good bye my friend, maybe for forever.  
Good bye my friend, the stars wait for me.  
Who knows where we shall meet again, if ever,  
But time keeps flowing like a river  
To the sea..."_

_ -The Alan Parson's Project_

* * *

_"Drop Dead Fred.._." she whispered. He pulled her close, holding her tightly. And then he was gone.

* * *

Fred materialized into his own world.

Here he was just a number, just another 'imaginary' being in a bustling and skewed realm where things really _did_ go bump in the night and nothing was ever as it seemed. He hated this place. There was a reason he'd always stayed in Snot-face's world instead of coming back here. He couldn't imagine dealing with this mess everyday. The only ones who really stuck around were the less than savory creatures - the ones who hid in dark alleys and under kid's beds and closets and came out to torment them at night.

The sky above him was gray and devoid of color. Houses were built so tightly together that it was impossible to tell where one ended and another began. They reminded him of old England at the turn of the century, only the ones here seemed to be built askew as if some drunkard with a protractor had altered their plans. Smoke rose from some of the chimneys, but Fred doubted that stew cooked in the pots that hung from their hearths, more than likely it was something far more sinister.

He focused on the road ahead of him, laid with uneven weathered cobblestones which only added to the general creepiness of the place. The roads went nowhere, winding their way around each other before narrowing into trails too small to pass through.

In the center of the town, the roads originated from a huge round building which stood three stories high and housed a sort of administration headquarters. Here those with charges received their new assignments after each of their previous ones were completed.

Fred found it dreadfully boring and tedious. It reminded him of the long queues that Snot-face had stood in on her one trip to Six Flags when she was seven, after her father had finally convinced the Mega-beast to let them take her.

That and a cross between the DMV.

He made his way slowly toward the unending line encircling the building, along with dozens of others who had completed their assignments. He would have liked to have some itching power to sprinkle over everyone in the front like he had at Six Flags to shorten the line. He smiled in fond remembrance, but his magic didn't work here.

A page from one of Lizzie's children's books of long ago flashed through his mind, of funny little creatures called Zed's - all lined up for a haircut.

_"From near to far, from here to there, funny things are everywhere..."_

He sighed as he took his place at the end of the line.

Any of his charges accustomed to his zany, carefree ways would be confused at his personality change. But here in his own realm, he was quiet and kept to himself. It was safer to lay low. His small circle of friends were the same. If they happened to pass each other, a nod and a smile was about the extent of their interaction. It was when their charges managed to cross paths that the real fun happened.

After what seemed like eons of mindless waiting, his turn finally came.

"Next!" came a thin, raspy voice ahead of him.

He walked up to the woman and surveyed her quickly, coming to the conclusion that she was older than dirt.

"Name and category."

Fred was hard pressed to remember ever seeing someone as old and shriveled, and he couldn't resist the temptation to tease. "Hey, 'Pruney', how's it hangin?" The lady stared at him, unamused. "Sorry, " he muttered, the wind out of his sails. "Drop Dead Fred, Imaginary Friend."

The lady passed him a key, "Here's your new assignment...Next!"

Fred pocketed the key and left quickly. Truth be told, he wasn't very excited about a new charge right now. The last week had been a little intense, and after spending so many years in a jack-in-the-box prison, he'd rather just enjoy being free for a while.

He thought back over all the charges he had had. There had been so many, and even though most of the children had spent three or four years of their lives with him, his memories of them ran together until he couldn't be sure of who any truly were. Save one...

_Lizzie._

He supposed had he not spent over fifteen years locked away in the jack-in-the-box in her room, she probably would have become just another face among many, her memory lost in the crowd. The thought made his heart skip a beat. He counted himself lucky that it had not been 25 or 30 years.

Discovering that Snot-face had grown up had disturbed him more than he cared to admit. It had shocked him to see her, not as the mischievous seven year old he had remembered - full of life and happiness, but as a woman, unsure of herself with a quiet voice and sad eyes.

Still, by the end of the week her true spirit had begun to shine through again, and if he hadn't had to use up his remaining strength to keep himself alive, he would have liked to stay awhile. Though he didn't know how long he would have been able to stomach Mickey Fart-pant's girly-gushing before his vomit seriously got the better of him.

Fred breathed a sigh of sigh of relief as he exited the crowded building and stepped back out into the open streets. After Snot-face, he'd prefer a boy as his new charge - they were much less confusing. He took the key out of his pocket and turned the small tag around. It read: 'Natalie Bunce'.

"Natalie Bunce?" He _knew_ that name.

_Bunce..._

Wasn't that Fart-pant's _real_ name? He seemed to remember something about him having a daughter. Fred didn't know whether to be thrilled or horrified. If his charge was who he thought it was, he would see Snot-face again - but she wouldn't be able to see him, of course.

How fun it would be to play tricks on Lizzie! Nothing _horrible_, just a few pranks for old time's sake. His mood lightened as he considered the possibilities.

On the other side of the administration building stood a long line of non-descript doors where imaginary friends entered the world of their charges. He stepped up to one, slid his key into the lock, opened the door, and materialized into the world of Natalie Bunce.

* * *

Fred and Natalie became fast friends. Her babysitter was just as bad as the Mega-Beast had been and Snaggle-tooth, as he had begun calling Natalie after she lost her front two teeth, was game for anything Fred could come up with.

The first time he saw Lizzie again, they had just rigged up a snare for the Mega-beast-babysitter when there she was- standing with the sun shining on her hair and a smile on her face. She looked so happy, and Fred swelled with pride to think that he might have had a hand in that.

For the most part he tried to ignore her, until Lizzie told Natalie, "The next time you see Drop Dead Fred, you give him my love."

_"Love_!" shouted Fred. "Love is for sissies and girls! I'm not a _girl_, I'm Drop Dead Fred!" Laughing he turned to follow Natalie back to her house.


	2. Black

"_I will remember you,_

_will you remember me?_

_Don't let your life pass you by-_

_weep not for the memories"_

_ -Sarah McLachlan_

_

* * *

_

Lizzie flipped on the radio and sang along absently as she drove down the road. She was meeting Mickey and his daughter Natalie at the old park they used to play in when they were kids for lunch. As she drove past her mother's house she rolled her eyes at the new "keep off the grass" sign staked up near the driveway. Her mother didn't have enough visitors to worry about the grass getting messed up. She pulled into the parking lot of the park, got out of the car, and sat down on the top of the picnic table to wait for Mickey and Natalie.

All around her was the world of her childhood. There were so many memories here in this park. More of her and Fred than of her and Mickey, though. To her right was a small wooded area where a dozen or more pine trees stood together. She could still see a slight indentation in the ground in the midst of them. She grinned, remembering exactly why it looked like that there. She and Fred had decided there were far too many yappy dogs in the park so they - well mostly Fred - had dug an enormous hole which they had covered with broken off pine branches. They hadn't caught a dog, but one of the local bullies had fallen in and been trapped for a few hours before anyone came along to pull him out. She and Fred had deemed it a hilarious success on those grounds and the park department had come by and filled it in the next day.

Fred...she couldn't believe he was with Natalie! It was comforting in a way to have him so close - even if she couldn't see him anymore. Even more comforting was the knowledge that on some level at least, he was _real_. She couldn't count the times since freeing him from his jack-in-the-box prison that she'd thought maybe she had just cracked. That the stress of her mom and her philandering husband had just finally gotten the best of her and she had gone bonkers and dredged up some half-forgotten memory of a childhood imaginary friend who often seemed a little too real to be imaginary.

"Hey, stranger!" shouted Mickey. Lizzie looked up to see him and his daughter walking up the sidewalk from their house. Lizzie waved and hopped down off of the table to meet them.

As Lizzie and Mickey ate their lunch and chatted, Fred and Natalie played nearby. Fred looked over at Lizzie, remembering similar times at this park so very long ago. Natalie noticed Fred watching Lizzie and asked him if he knew her.

"Snot-face?" said Fred looking back at Natalie. "I used to."

Natalie jumped up and grabbed Fred's hand and started pulling him towards the couple. "Hey, let's go see if she wants to play with us!"

Fred laughed and pulled her back, "Lizzie's turned into a yucky, smelly, big girl. That's what happens when you grow up! Come on, Snaggle-tooth, let's roll rocks down the slide to scare the birds and see if they poop on people's heads!"

"Okay Fred!" Natalie ran towards the slide.

Fred glanced back at Lizzie with a last wistful smile and then ran to catch up with Natalie.

They had finished lunch and packed up to leave when Natalie came over to Lizzie.

"Fred says that you turn into a yucky, smelly girl when you grow up. Is that true? Is that why you can't play with me and Fred?" she asked.

Lizzie laughed, "You can tell Fred that I'm still not half as smelly as he is since he's a boy."

Natalie giggled and turned to follow her dad back down the sidewalk towards their house.

Lizzie got into her car and drove out of the park. She was about to turn towards home when she remembered she had promised her mom to stop by today. Sighing, she mentally prepared her 'prim and proper' persona that her mother would expect. She wondered what her life would have been like if she'd grown up with the storybook family as many of her friends had. She supposed there would be less - - - -

[_Fade to black_]

* * *

_A/N; Um, yep, it's supposed to end like that... Also, I started by spelling her name Lizzy, but then I changed it to Lizzie. I tried to catch them all, but some may have slipped by._


	3. Lost and Found

"_So let it start, my friend, let it start.  
Let the tears come rolling from your heart,  
and when you need a light in the lonely night,  
carry me like a fire in your heart..."_

_ -Chris De Burgh_

* * *

It was dusk - the sun was sitting gently in the west, the last golden light reflecting off the grass and touching the branches as their leaves rustled in the breeze. Lizzie sat up and looked around.

"What the..."

Why was she laying in her mother's yard?

Her head swam as she tried to remember how she had come to be there. The park...she remembered the park and eating lunch. Had she _walked_ from there? She looked around, but didn't see her car. Remembering that she had wanted to check on her mother while she was in the neighborhood, she supposed she might have left her car at the park.

The mailbox stood over her ominously, casting a strange shadow in the failing daylight. Had she walked into the mailbox and knocked herself out?

"Geez, Lizzie," she muttered, "sounds like something you'd do."

She picked herself up and brushed the remnants of freshly cut grass from her pants, wondering how long she'd been lying there for no one to notice her. She looked up at her mother's house, but then sighed and turned towards the house next door instead. She rang Mickey's doorbell and waited. The door opened and Mickey's sister looked out.

_Great,_ she thought_, his freakish sister instead, just what I need. _

"Hi Shelly," she started. "Is Mickey ho-" Shelly looked around and slammed the door. "Um, okay, never mind..."

Lizzie turned away and went back over to her mom's house. There was no answer at the door. Her watch read 7:45 pm...kind of late for her mom to be out.

Maybe she was trying to get a life, thought Lizzie, with little conviction. The door stood slightly ajar which in itself was odd. Ever since she and Fred's little 'cops and robbers' escapade when she was five, her mom had been terrified of being burglarized.

Lizzie slipped through the door. It shut loudly behind her, making her jump and reminding her just a little too much of the vision she had had with Fred. After making sure her mom wasn't there after all - and that there were no robbers - Lizzie went upstairs to her old room and lay down on the bed. In minutes, she was asleep.

Her dreams were filled with flashing lights, sirens, and the smell of burning plastic. She awoke with a start, head pounding, palms sweating, and the sound of blood rushing in her ears. Everything was still and dark and she was alone.

_Alone_.

During the day being alone didn't seem bad at all. It felt empowering, as if she had her whole life before her - an empty slate, waiting to be filled with life and love, a future without the interference of her mother, or Charles' domination, or even Fred's, well his 'Fred-ness' (although she suspected she would miss the latter long before she would the former two).

Now, in the dark, her heart racing from her nightmare, 'alone' took on a new meaning. She fought the irrational urge to climb out the window and walk across the tree branch to Mickey's house, knock on Natalie's window and ask if Fred was there.

She got up, turned on the light and looked around. The room had been fastidiously cleaned by her mother after Lizzie had moved back to her own apartment. She got down on her hands and knees, searching along the baseboard and under the bed until finally, stuck in the hinge of her closet door, she found what she had been looking for.

It was silly really, but she was halfway afraid, as she held the tiny feather, that the week before had all been a dream. In her hand was the last physical remnant she had to prove, if to no one else but herself, that Fred existed.

She smiled fondly at the raucous memory of Fred tearing apart 'Mr. Poo' and looked around for a safe place to keep the feather. She'd once had a small jewelry box in her old toy stash, but her mom had cleared out the rest of her things in defiance of her leaving. Finally she took the chain from around her neck and opened the simple heart shaped locket that she had put on that morning. She put the feather inside, carefully closed it, and slipped it back around her neck. Not feeling so alone anymore, she slipped back under the covers, turned of the lamp, and went back to sleep.

The sun streaming through her window woke her in the morning. She got up and went downstairs to find her mom. She found her sitting in the parlor, deep in conversation with someone on the other end of the phone. She waved to her when she glanced up, but her mother was apparently choosing to ignore her this morning - which was nothing new, although she thought she might have been surprised to find that her daughter had stayed the night. She looked like she hadn't slept well either and seemed somehow older since Lizzie had seen her the previous week.

"Thank you, doctor, " she said into the phone, "I'll make the arrangements."

Lizzie went over to stand in front of her. "Hey," she whispered. "who are you talking to?"

Why was she talking to a doctor? She was probably sick or something and just too stubborn to tell her anything about it. She certainly looked worse for wear. Lizzie was still trying to make out the gist of the conversation when she glanced at the mirror behind her mom. As she stared at the mirror, her mind went numb and time seemed to stand still. The phone call forgotten, she stepped around her mom's chair to stand before the mirror.

It was a full length mirror, four feet wide and extending from the floor to the ceiling. She had always loved that huge mirror- had loved watching herself in it as she spun around in her pretty dresses as a child. The time Fred smeared "POOP!" on it, with dog poop no less, was one of the few pranks he had pulled that had actually upset her. She had cleaned it off herself, before her mother had even seen it, and Fred had never touched the mirror again.

Now, her hands shook as she placed them against the cool glass and her knees buckled and she fell to the floor.

She shut her eyes tightly, willing herself to wake up from whatever crazy dream this was.

* * *

As Fred played "sand-box demons" with Natalie that morning, he wondered what was going on in the Bunce had called his horrid sister, Smelly or something like that, to come over and watch Natalie the evening before, then he had disappeared and never come home.

Fred knew something was wrong, Mickey was actually a great father and now that the awful babysitter was gone, he really doubted that he would be needed there very long much longer. And why the heck had Snot-face stayed the night over at the Mega-beast's house? Surely she'd had enough of that old hag to last a lifetime- he knew _he_ had.

He wouldn't have known she was over there, but he had awokensometime in the middle of the night with the feeling that something was wrong. He checked on Natalie, but she was sleeping peacefully. Then he saw the light click on in the window next door. Fully awake, he recognized the gentle tug of emotions as _Lizzie's_, not Natalie's.

It wasn't the first time that he'd found that, even though he had a new charge now, he could still sense Lizzie's emotions to some extent. He wasn't sure if it was because he was still attached to someone who was part of her life, or if it was because of his close proximity to her. It wasn't nearly as strong as it had been when she had been his charge, more like a ribbon of smoke now instead of the iron chain it once was, but now he felt her fear and knew she must have had a nightmare.

He wished he could go and comfort her, but since she could no longer see him he knew it would be in vain. Now, as he played with Natalie, he worried that something might be dreadfully wrong.

"Snaggle-tooth, would it be okay if I ran off for a bit?"

"Sure, Fred," answered Natalie. "I'm going to finish the war here and then put some red food coloring in Aunt Shelly's contact lens container!"

Fred gave her a bright smile and a high five. "Good thinking, Snaggle-tooth!" Then he disappeared into a flurry of green sparks. He materialized in Lizzie's old room but not seeing her he ran down the stairs. He checked in the kitchen. Not finding her there either, he went on to the parlor.

"Snot-face?!"

He rounded the corner at a run and nearly barreled into her mother. He saw no sign of Lizzie and was about to leave the room when movement caught his eye on the other side of the room.

"Snot-face? Snot-face!" He ran over to where she knelt, white as a sheet, shaking visibly. "Lizzie! Hey, what's wrong?" He had no hope for her to answer, he was silent and invisible to her now. To his surprise she turned towards him.

"Fred? Fred!" She ran to him and threw her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder and holding on to him for dear life.

Stunned, he hesitated only a moment before wrapping his arms around her tightly. When her tears had subsided, he took her by the shoulders and held her back enough for him to see her face. So many questions buzzed through his brain, but he settled on the first thing that came to mind.

"Snot-face, how... You're not supposed to be able to see me!"

She buried her face back into his chest. "I don't know, Fred," came the muffled reply. "Look in the mirror."

Fred turned to the mirror. It took him a second to realize what he was looking at - or rather _not_ looking at. He had never made a reflection, but where was _Lizzie's_?

"What's going on, Fred?" she cried, "Everyone's acting crazy...I don't think anyone can see me but _you_!"

To emphasize the point, she went to where her mother was now standing, looking out the window.

"Mom! Mom!" She tried vainly to get her mom's attention by shaking her shoulder, but her fingers seemed unable to grasp anything properly and the best she managed was a gentle push. Her mom turned towards her, looked though her, and walked away.

It was Fred's turn to be shell-shocked - not an emotion that graced him often. He tried not to get caught up in Lizzie's panic. That wouldn't help anyone right now. She was still following her mother through the room, shouting, screaming, trying to make an impression on the obviously oblivious woman that she was chasing. Fred caught her arm as she passed by him.

"Wait Lizzie... just wait. Calm down for a minute and let's think this through." Being around small children for what seemed like an eternity made his mind feel like it was full of mud when he was faced with something more serious than how to plan the next prank. He struggled to plow through it. "What happened? When did all this start?"

Lizzie told him about the day before, about the mailbox she must have walked into and how she found herself lying in her mom's front yard. About Shelly slamming the door in her face and then her letting herself into her mom's house.

"Fred, what if Shelly couldn't see me? It's the only thing that makes sense! It was so weird, how she looked around like she didn't hear anything I said and then just slammed the door. What am I going to do, Fred?" She hesitated for a moment, then ran towards the door. "I've got to get home!" she said suddenly, but then stopped, confused, "I ...I don't know where my car is though. I think I might have left it at the park."

"Well, come on then, " said Fred taking her hand, "Let's go take a look."


	4. Night

The car wasn't at the park.

"I don't know, Fred," Lizzie repeated for the umpteenth time. The walk to the park had helped calm her nerves, but Fred's questioning was driving her over the edge. "I don't know where it is and asking me if I'm sure again isn't going to help me remember! We'll just have to take the bus."

They had to walk five blocks until they came to a bus stop that wasn't deserted. It made sense that if no one could see her, standing at an abandoned bus stop wasn't going to get them very far. Lizzie moved to stand at the back of the bus in the aisle, so as to not get sat on if she took a seat. They got off the stop before her apartment, not wanting to risk no one else getting off there and then be forced to walk back even further.

Fred found all the walking mind-bogglingly tedious, accustomed as he was to just popping in and out of where he wanted to be, but he tried to put on a good face for Lizzie. When they finally reached her apartment it was evening, and she found not only did she no longer have her keys, but she seemed to have a hard time even gripping the doorknob. As when she tried to shake her mother, her hand seemed almost to miss it's mark and she couldn't grip it to turn it. Fred watched her try a few times and then reached over and turned the knob himself. Locked. He could see Lizzie's resolve start to crack.

"We'll have to break the window," he heard her whisper. Watching her fumble with the doorknob had given him another idea though. Before he could think about what a stupid plan it would be if it didn't work, he put his hands on Lizzie's back and shoved her into - and through the door.

"Ha! Well, that takes care of that!" he said brightly as he joined her on the other side. He had unfortunately forgotten however the impact that it might have on an otherwise normal human to find that they can suddenly pass through walls. Lizzie fell to her knees and held her head in her hands and started to cry softly.

"Hey, hey, Snot-face," he said kneeling down to her level. "This is awesome! Just think of all the fun you can have now!"

Lizzie, unmindful of what Fred had been saying, raised her head and fixed her brown eyes on Fred's blue ones, "Fred...Am I dead?"

He held her stare for a moment before he answered, a quick grimace belying the jovial words he spoke next. "Dead? You don't feel dead to me!" he said poking her rib and causing an unconscious laugh to escape her otherwise tearful demeanor. "No Snot-face," he said more seriously, "I don't think you're dead. But...I think you need to think about this in a different light. What if this is some weird dream that you're having or something? You should be having fun!"

"I've never had a dream that was so real before, or that I was so exhausted in," she said. "I've got to sleep." With that she slowly stood up from the floor and made her way to the bedroom. The door was closed. She shook her head in resignation as she tried and failed to open it. "Fred, would you.." He opened the door for her. She sat down on the bed and proceeded to take off her shoes and change for bed.

"Um...Snot-face.."

Lizzie glanced up surprised to see Fred - was he _blushing_? "What's wrong?" she asked suspiciously.

"Um...well...you seem to having a bit of a problem holding onto things right now. I was just thinking that you... well," he stammered, "you might not want to change out of your clothes because you might not be able to..."

"Oh!" She felt a mirroring redness creeping into her own face. "Yeah, I...that probably wouldn't be a good thing." She finished taking off her shoes and stood up, intending to turn back the covers. Fred beat her to it and tucked them around her after she lay down.

"Fred"

"Yeah, Snot-face?"

"If this isn't a dream, will you still be here when I wake up?"

Fred smiled warmly. "I'll be here. Now get some sleep!"

It didn't take long before she was sleeping peacefully. Fred took the opportunity to pop back to Natalie who was also just getting into bed.

"Hey Snaggle-tooth! How'd you do with the Wicked Witch of the West today? Are her eyes red?"

Natalie giggled happily. "Fred! Yeah! You should'a seen it! When she put her contacts in it looked like her eyes were full of blood!"

"Way to go!" he said giving her a high five. "I'm sorry I missed it. I had to help a friend for a while."

"That's okay, Fred, I didn't mind. Daddy says we're going to get ice-cream after school tomorrow! Are you gonna come with us?"

Fred sighed, "I'm afraid I can't. My friend still needs some help if that's okay with you."

"Is it Lizzie?" Natalie asked.

Fred was surprised that she'd guessed who it was. "Yes, it is."

"That's okay, Fred. I like her, tell her I hope she gets better soon."

Fred waited until Natalie had fallen asleep and then popped back into Lizzie's room to check on her. Convinced she wasn't going to stir for a while he went back to her living room and lay down on the couch. He was asleep before he knew it.

Fred was dreaming. Just bits and pieces really, but nearly every night it was always the same. The scene played out over and over - children laughing, and the sound of music. Then the fire and screaming would come and he would wake, his heart racing, remembering nothing of his dream but with an overwhelming sense of having forgotten something of vital importance.

Tonight was no different. He sat up, taking in his surroundings and shaking off the uneasy feeling. He supposed that since he was still on Lizzie's couch that would mean that the previous day's events hadn't been some strange sort of dream.

He got up and wandered into the kitchen to check the contents of her fridge. Blech! Nothing but healthy crap. He spied a muffin wrapped up on the counter top and settled for that instead. He didn't need to eat, physically he never actually felt hunger, but the act itself Fred found oddly comforting. He tried not to dwell on the fact of what absolute nonsense that was. He had discovered long ago that trying to answer 'why?" questions concerning himself brought on a slew of emotions not associated with being a child's carefree imaginary friend, therefore he dutifully avoided such lines of thinking.

He finished his snack and then popped into Natalie's room to check on her. He tucked the covers back around her where she had kicked them off then left and popped into Lizzie's room. She slept soundly, knees curled up towards her chest, cheek pillowed on her hands which lay folded together beneath them. If he squinted, she still looked like the child he had known so many years ago. He reached over to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear then leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

"Good-night, Snot-face," he whispered and popped back into the living room.

* * *

_A/N: One thing I noticed when I re-watched the movie in prep for writing this story is that Lizzie and Fred are pretty touchy-feely with each other. He hugs her and takes her hand, etc. and they seem really comfortable around each other (in a platonic sort of way.)_


	5. Day

"_If I lay here, if I just lay here,_

_would you lie with me_

_and just forget the world?_

_Forget what we're told,_

_before we get too old -  
_

_show me a garden that's bursting into life..."_

_-Snow Patrol_

_

* * *

_

The sunlight streaming through the window woke Lizzie. She cautiously opened her eyes - in her room, in her bed. That was normal enough she thought, maybe it was just a crazy dream. Her hopes faded when she sat up and noticed she was still dressed in her clothes from the day before. Hope flew off and disappeared completely as she passed the mirror standing in the corner of the room and as before, she failed to make a reflection. That was too dang creepy she thought and went over with the purpose of turning it around towards the wall. Her hands couldn't grab it properly, but she did manage to knock it over with a loud crash, the glass shattering on the floor. Shaking her head, she left it there and went to open the bedroom door only to find that she couldn't make that work either.

"Ooooo!" she huffed angrily. "Fred!"

The sound of breaking glass had woken him up and he popped into her room beside her.

"Hey Snot-face...oooo!" he said, taking in the broken mirror. "Are we redecorating? Let's do this one, too!" With that he produced a hammer and before Lizzie could protest, smashed the mirror above her dresser as well.

"Fred! Stop it!"

"Why?" he argued. "It would've just pissed you off anyway when you passed it. It's better to just get rid of it."

The sincerity in his tone surprised her and she glanced away with a frustrated sigh. She'd known Fred long enough to realize when he was doing what he thought was best for her, but why did he have to go about it in such an exasperating way? The still closed door caught her attention and she remembered what had upset her in the first place. "Fred," she started, taking a seat on the bed. "Can I ask you...well...a weird question?"

Fred plopped down on the bed beside her. "Sure Snot-face! What's on your mind?"

"This." She tried unsuccessfully to grab her pillow, but her hands merely brushed the surface. "How come you can pick it up and I can't? How can you open doors and break mirrors and I can't?"

"I'm sorry," he replied loftily. "I can't divulge my secrets."

"Fred, come on, be serious." She knew he could if he wanted to.

He looked up at her through his lashes and grimaced. "Alright, what do you want to know?"

"Well, for starters, how the heck do I open the door?" She moved across the room to stand in front of it. "The harder I try, the harder it gets!" To prove her point, she focused with all her might and tried to turn the handle. This time her hand passed completely through the knob with out even touching it. "See! Show me how, Fred... please?" She jokingly batted her eyes at him.

"Fine...okay, " he sighed. "Here... you're both trying too hard and not trying hard enough, but not in the ways you need to be. Look," Fred moved around her and held his hand beside the doorknob, "right now, I'm thinking about how the knob will feel in my hand - the shape, the temperature of the metal, if it's smooth or rough, and I'm _expecting_ it to turn when I turn it." He closed his hand around the knob and turned it easily, opening the door. He pulled it shut again and let it go. "Here's what you're doing," he once again held his hand beside the knob. "You're not concentrating on how it will feel, you're concentrating on the thing itself. And," he looked at her knowingly, "y_ou don't believe you can do it." _With that he passed his hand through the knob, touching nothing.

Lizzie was dumbstruck, "Oh...okay, here, let me try." She held her hand out and looked at the knob. She imagined the cool metal and the round shape in her hand. "_This knob will turn when I want it to_," she thought to herself. She reached out and _felt_ the knob, turned it, and opened the door. "I did it!" She flashed Fred a brilliant smile. "Hey, you're a good teacher, Fred!"

An odd niggle of the feeling that woke him at night shot through his guts. He ignored it. Smirking, he closed the door again in front of her. "Well, Miss Smarty-Pants, the lesson's not over yet. Now you have to learn how to get through the door without opening it."

"Why do I have to learn that?" she complained. "The knob's right there!"

"Because it's more fun, of course! Come on, just think what you thought when you thought you couldn't open the door."

"What?"

Fred rolled his eyes, "Just concentrate on the door and believe you'll walk through it. Actually, walking through things is easy, just don't think about anything at all and just do it." With that he stepped through the door to the other side. "Come on!" he called through the door, "You can do it!" He waited until he heard a loud _"thump!"_ on the other side.

"Ow!"

"Don't think about hitting your head on it, just do it!" he said. Another _"thump"_ and another_ "Ow!"_ followed the first one. Fred walked back through the door.

"Okay, look," he moved to stand so that Lizzie was between him and the door, "turn towards the door, close your eyes, and picture the door in your mind...Are your eyes closed?"

"Yes, my eyes are closed," she replied.

'_Well, it worked last night_', he thought to himself. "Are you picturing the door?"

"Yes."

Fred pushed her through. He popped to the other side and caught her before she could fall.

"Fred!" she twisted herself out of his arms and smacked his shoulder - hard. "That's not fair! Quit pushing me around."

"Well excuse me for trying to help!" he countered. "I was only trying to make a point."

"Which was...?"

"You think too much, " he said, smacking her on her forehead.

"Ow! Fine! I need to do it myself, though," she said turning around.

Fred gave up the argument. Fighting with Lizzie was pointless. One minute she'd be fine and happy and then something he would say or do would piss her off, and he'd spend the next half hour trying to figure what he'd done wrong. This 'grown up' version of Snot-face was too confusing, things had been much easier when she was seven.

Lizzie focused on being angry at Fred instead of getting through the door. This time she didn't bang her head. "I did it!" she stuck her head back through the door to look at him. "I did it!"

"Bravo!" he replied. "You need practice, though. Come on!" He took her hand and ran with her down the hallway and then through the door. They spent the next hour passing through the doors and walls of the apartments around them, knocking over things and throwing objects across rooms. They managed to convince several people of the existence of ghosts in the process.

They came out of a wall on the far side of Lizzie's apartment. Fred fell to the grass, howling with laughter.

"Did'ja see that guy's face?" laughed Lizzie.

Fred held his hands up like claws and shouted, "Curse of the possessed Salad-Shooter! Run for your lives! Hey! I've got a great idea! There's somewhere I want you to see."

"Um, okay. Where is it?"

"It's a surprise!" said Fred, cryptically. "Listen, I've never tried to take someone with me when I pop off somewhere, so if this doesn't work, I'll be right back. Here, hold onto me." She looked up at him warily, then nodded and reached out her arms. He wrapped her in a bear hug and they disappeared.

* * *

The next instant, Lizzie found herself transported to a place she'd never been before. The first thing that hit her was the dry heat and she knew she wasn't in New England anymore. Next she noticed the sky. It was no longer smoggy and gray, but a brilliant, opaque, seamless blue, like something out of a calendar - one of those with the pictures that made you wish you were somewhere else each month. She stepped away from Fred and took in the rest of the view. Now she could see that they were standing beside what appeared to be an abandoned or rarely used dirt road. About 100 feet in front of her was a wayside marker next to a waist high guard rail. The rail was flanked on one side by a sheer face of reddish-orange rock and the other by a few short, twisted, scrub trees and boulders as high as her head. Beyond the guard rail, the ground seemed to be broken off in mid air and disappear. She walked to the rail and looked over. Below her was a canyon so deep and expansive it took her breath away. She was struck speechless by the beauty of it all. Fred spoke first.

"Pretty neat, huh?" he asked, in a quiet tone, coming to stand beside her.

"Fred, it's beautiful!" She was amazed. "Where are we? How did you find this place?"

Fred rested his arms on the rail and looked over the side. "Well, I'm not sure where we are exactly, other than somewhere in Arizona. The family of one of my charge's used to come here a lot. They probably lived close by."

"You don't remember?" she asked, intrigued. She knew so little of Fred's past, in fact, she couldn't remember him ever talking about it before.

Fred seemed to hesitate and then said , "No, I don't remember."

"Huh," she paused, considering. "How many charges have you had, before me and Natalie?"

"More than one." His slight grimace and tone of voice told her it had been many, many more than one. He sounded defeated and it was so uncharacteristic of himself that she decided to change the subject...for now.

"Well, it certainly is beautiful, Fred. Thank you for bringing me here." She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. As she expected, it snapped him out of his dark introspection.

"Hey! Blech!" he laughed, wiping off his cheek. "Don't get all mushy on me or I'll have to vomit on you! Besides, I didn't bring you here for the scenery, I brought you here because it's time you stopped living in a box and learned to have some fun."

He hopped over the railing and stood at the edge of the drop-off. She started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She watched as he took two steps back until he was standing on nothing but air. He held out his hands towards her.

"Come on, Snot-face!"

"What?" she cried. "Are you crazy? There's no way I won't think I'm going to fall, and then I will and I'm guessing it'll hurt a heck of a lot more than smacking my head on a door!"

"No you won't. I won't let you fall. Come on!...You know you want to...," he sing-songed. She did want to, he knew it – he could _feel _it. He grinned.

"Fred," she started. "I can't, I'll..."

Fred saw through her words, he saw her body unconsciously lean forward, her hands grip the rails a little tighter, and her eyes widen just a bit. He caught her eyes. "Come on...just one step at a time."

Surely just standing on the other side of the rail wouldn't hurt thought Lizzie as her body seemingly moved over it and towards Fred of it's own accord. She glanced at Fred, his hands outstretched and then at the breathtaking vista surrounding them. She was crazy - had to be crazy for even considering it- yet things were different now, weren't they? And Fred was right, he knew her better than anyone ever had. How many times in her lonely life after Fred had been taken from her had she dreamed of doing something amazing, but had been afraid to take even the first step. Now, here he was, figment of her imagination or not, the only one that had ever made her feel alive. Gravity be damned!

She reached out and grasped his hands tightly in hers, never taking her eyes off his. He led them backwards, one step at a time, until they were halfway across the divide. The wind whipped at her clothing and blew her short hair into her eyes. She turned into it to clear it from her face. Fred stopped walking.

"Okay," he said, "now for the fun part!"

"I thought this _was_ the fun part!"

"No, no, no, this was just how you get to where the fun part starts."

"I think this is plenty of excitement for me, thank you," she replied.

"Snot-face! You've gotten this far. The next part's even more fun, I promise. If you don't, you'll live to regret it."

"Um yeah...operant word there being _live_!"

"Come on, Lizzie," he said, "don't you trust me?"

She though for a moment, "I don't know, it depends on the situation."

Her comment stung him. Sure, he'd wreaked havoc in her name, gotten her kicked out of restaurants, made people question her sanity, but that was just him messing with her. He liked the way her eyes flashed when she got pissed off. This was different, though. Didn't she know him well enough to know that he'd never let anything hurt her? He took a step towards her. "You know I'd never do anything to hurt you!"

"Whacking me in the head with shovels and kicking me in the shins hurts," she said coolly, "just so you know."

Crap, he supposed she had a point. He hadn't really done much to garner trust in himself.

"I'm sorry, Snot-face, I really am, but I _promise_, I _swear_, I'll never hurt you again," he pleaded.

Lizzie knew she was just stalling the inevitable. If she said no, he'd just make her walk back across the canyon by herself while he popped off somewhere. That sounded a heck of a lot worse than anything she could imagine he had in mind.

"You _swear_."

"I swear." He let go of one hand and held up his pinky just like when she was a child. She smirked and hooked hers around it, sealing the deal. Fred was giddy with mirth, his eyes shone.

"Okay...take a deep breath, hold onto me, and don't let go."

Lizzie moved her hands up to hold onto his arms.

"You're gonna want to hold on tighter than that," he laughed.

She looked at him uneasily and instead put her arms around him in a tight hug. She felt his arms tighten around her as he whispered in her ear.

"I promise I won't let you go."

She didn't have a chance to respond before Fred threw them headfirst from the place they'd been standing, barrel-rolling straight down towards the canyon floor. Over and over they spun, and Lizzie knew she was screaming, but the wind ripped the sound away. She screamed and screamed until she couldn't scream anymore. The fall seemed to take forever and ever, on and on until she knew any moment she'd feel the impact of the rock at the bottom and it would all be over. Then suddenly, there was nothing but darkness. She had just enough time to think that she was probably very dead now, and then the world popped back in and she found herself standing with Fred, safely behind the guard rail. He released her, too quickly, and she lost her balance and fell to the ground.

"See, that wasn't so bad was it?" asked Fred, dropping to his knees beside her. "Hey, are you okay?"

Lizzie was still having trouble putting a coherent thought together. Instead of answering, she rolled over onto her back and stretched out on the ground with her eyes closed and struggled to catch her breath. Finally, she opened her eyes to look at Fred who was sitting beside her, waiting anxiously for her response. She could tell she was making him nervous. She stared at him for a second before bursting into laughter. "You were right, Fred, I don't think anything is going to top that."

He smiled gleefully and nudged her shoulder, "See I told you so!"

He lay back on the ground and they were both quiet for several minutes. Lizzie was almost asleep when Fred broke the silence.

"No..," he said "crap! Crap! Crap! Crap..."

"Fred, what's wrong?" asked Lizzie, sitting up. Something was most definitely wrong with him. His face had turned white as a sheet and his eyes looked like a deer caught in headlights, staring into the unseen.

"I have to go," he whispered. "I'm sorry, Snot-face. You'll...you'll have to find a way to get home. Just...just...you can do it if you think about it, just...or just stay here and I'll try to find a way back..."

Lizzie got up, went over to him and gave him a shake. "Fred, what are you talking about? You're starting to scare me."

Fred finally looked at her, his blue eyes frantic. " My assignment, with Natalie... it's up... I'm being called back."

"Well, just stay here! Don't go back!" Where was back, she wondered?

"I can't Lizzie, it doesn't work that way. I can't stay in your world without a charge. Any second I'm going to disappear, whether I want to or not."

Lizzie tried to process what he was telling her. He was going to leave her alone again - this time in a world where no one could see her or hear her! "Take me with you!" she blurted out before she could think twice about it.

"No, I can't take you with me! It's not the kind of place you'd want to go." Even as he spoke, he sensed her resolve grow stronger.

"I don't care, Fred!" she said. "I'm coming with you. You're not leaving me here all by myself!"

Fred found himself faced with two impossible choices. On one hand, he could leave Lizzie here to find her own way back and possibly get lost or hurt and try to find her after he returned- continuing his endless string of charges and assignments. On the other hand, he could try and take her with him to a world just as dangerous and perhaps more so than this one, and then what after that? He couldn't very well leave her_ there _and take another assignment. The pull of the call to return became stronger and he knew his time was running out. Well, if both places were dangerous, he'd at least feel better having her with him than off on her own somewhere. They'd just have to make a plan later.

"Lizzie, if I take you with me, the world we'd be going to isn't like this one. There are no fun and games there - it's dangerous, and you'd have to do exactly what I say, no matter what, to stay safe."

Lizzie didn't hesitate, "Let's go."

Once again, Fred hugged her tight, and they disappeared.


	6. Elphyne

_A/N: Someone asked me if they were both dead...It's better to think of the different places in this story as different dimensions of the living world. Just because Fred isn't real in one, doesn't mean that he's not real in another, etc. Lizzie is physically real to him, even though no one can else can see her._

* * *

"_Hush little baby don't say a word,  
and never mind that noise you heard.  
It's just the beast under your bed,  
in your closet , and in your head..."  
-Metallica_

* * *

The darkness seemed to go on forever. Long enough for Lizzie to determine that it wasn't a lack of light, but a lack of anything, a nothingness so complete that she felt she might go insane. She could feel nothing- not her body, nor Fred holding her. Total sensory deprivation. When at last she felt she couldn't take another second of it, they emerged into a world unlike anything she had ever seen. Her eyes took in the streets and buildings and then she noticed the long line of ...creatures...for lack of a better term, waiting in what looked like an amusement park queue.

"Fred, what is this place?" she whispered.

"Hell...or something close to it," he replied. "Come on, but stay close. There's only one place I know to take you here that's safe."

He led her away from the large building in the center of town into a narrow, seemingly deserted alley. Here Fred's behavior became quite odd, at least to Lizzie. He didn't just walk straight down the road, but seemed to be dodging things, going around things. Once he pushed her into a narrow doorway and stood in front of her, waiting a moment before motioning her to continue. At first she thought he was just playing one of his games and was about to tell him to knock it off, but his face was so deadly serious now that she thought better of it.

"Fred, what are you doing?" she asked instead.

"What are you talking about? I'm trying to get you down the alley as safely as I can."

"What do you mean? There's no one here!" she cried.

Fred stopped and turned to her. "You can't see any of this?" He gestured around them.

She shook her head.

"Nothing?"

Again, she shook her head.

Fred led her back a short ways to where another alley split off and peered around the corner. He moved back beside Lizzie.

"Around the corner, take a look, and tell me what you see. Do it quick, though."

Lizzie took a quick peek. "Nothing, " she replied. "It's empty."

"You can't see the clown with the balloons?"

She was seriously beginning to think that one of them was crazy.

"No, there's nothing there!"

Fred gave her a long, confused look. "Well, I don't know why you can't see any of these...things, but you're just going to have to trust me that they're there." he said. "Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You know all those things that go "bump in the night"?"

"Yeah?"

"This is _their_ world..."

Lizzie almost wished she hadn't asked about him anything in the first place. It was worse to know there were unseen creatures all around her, lurking in the shadows. She moved closer to Fred. Several minutes later, he finally stopped in front of a door that looked to Lizzie like every other that they had passed.

"I don't usually stay in this world any longer than it takes me to get my next assignment, so I'm not completely sure this is the right place. Be ready to run if I tell you to."

Fred knocked twice on the door and waited. A small shutter opened in the upper center and someone peered out. It shut again and a moment later they heard the sound of a bolt being drawn back.

The door opened a crack and a voice inside said, "Hurry, hurry! Come in!"

Fred pulled Lizzie inside with him and the door was shut and re-locked behind them. It was so dark that it took her eyes a minute to adjust. When they did, she found that they were standing in a long, narrow hallway. It seemed to angle downwards at length into a larger room lit by what she assumed must be a fireplace. The light flickered and danced across the walls ahead.

"It's been too long, lad." She heard the owner of the house say. She turned around and was shocked to find herself staring, not at a man as she had though he would be, but at a creature with the head and hooves of a goat, walking upright and clothed as a man.

"Come and sit," he said, leading them down the passage to the small center room. On the left of the room was a long wooden table and on the opposite side was a large fireplace in which a roaring fire was burning. He took a seat at the table and motioned for them to sit as well. There was only one chair. Lizzie and Fred looked at each other, confused. Lizzie sat down in the chair. The goat-man looked at Fred and again motioned him to sit.

"Take a seat, my boy."

Fred was thoroughly confused. He cleared his throat, "Um...since Snot-face is already sitting there and I don't think she'd care for me sitting on her, I guess I'll stand."

The creature squinted at the chair. "Have you picked yourself up a bwndyne on your travels? I'm afraid I cannot see her. She must be a fearsome creature with a name like 'Snot-face'."

Lizzie fortunately seemed to have missed the last comment (or didn't know what he meant). Fred had the decency to look embarrassed.

"Lizzie," he corrected himself, "her name is Lizzie. She's a...she's a girl. You can't see her?"

The goat-man shook his head sadly, "I'm sorry to say that I cannot. It has been many moons since a lass has darkened this doorway."

Fred found himself at a loss for words. In this world he was real, made of flesh and blood. Why wasn't Lizzie? Whatever had gone wrong in her world was wrong here as well.

"So tell me, " the creature continued, "what brings you back to this forsaken world, other than your next key?"

"I'm looking for a way to get Lizzie back home to her world. I'm...sorry," said Fred, "it's been a long time, I seem to have forgotten your name, sir."

The goat-man laughed. "Of course you have, lad! Time barely passes here...but, oh," he went on sharply, eyes flashing, "it passes for you, does it not? How many charges have you taken since you came here? How many years have passed for you? A century... more?" He stopped suddenly and looked around as if only now remembering where he was. "I'm sorry, lad," he said in a softer tone, "I don't mean to judge. I am old, I see clearly at times...and sometimes not clearly at all," he added, giving Lizzie's chair a conspiratorial wink. "My name is Stibbler."

"Stibbler," Fred began, "we're sorry to have bothered you. If you could just point us in the right direction, we'll be on our..."

"And just where do you think you'd be off to?" shouted Stibbler. "You've barely spent an hour of the last 10 years as a mortal, and yet you think you're in the condition to be rushing off somewhere? No, lad, tonight you will have a meal and sleep. Tomorrow is soon enough to search for the answers you seek."

He served Fred what smelled vaguely like stew from a pot hanging beside the fire.

"Would the lass care for a bowl?" asked Stibbler politely.

"No," said Lizzie.

"Yes, thank you," said Fred.

Stibbler filled another bowl and set in on the table by the empty chair. He left the room for a moment and returned shortly with two blankets.

"I'm afraid this is all I have to offer you for the night, but the fire should keep you warm enough."

Fred murmured his thanks and Stibbler disappeared up the staircase and the far end of the room, leaving them alone.

"You need to eat," Fred told Lizzie.

She shook her head, "I don't feel hungry at all. That's probably not a good sign, huh?" she said, more to herself than to Fred. What she really wanted was to find a good way to ask him what the heck was going on.

"What did he mean about me being an bin..bund..?" she asked.

"An bwndyne is a creature who is bound to a human, and only that person can see them," he explained. "If they're separated from each other, they both die...so it's a good thing you're not since we need to find a way to get you back home tomorrow."

Lizzie got up from the chair and to move in front of the fire. Fred followed and they sat together in silence watching the flames. As concerned as she was for her own self and what might happen to her, Lizzie was equally concerned with Fred. Through the years spent with him when she was little and that last week she'd spent as his charge after she'd freed him from the jack-in-the-box, she'd seen several sides of Fred. Mickey, who had only seen the effects of Fred's pranks, had described him as "out of control", but that was only one side of him. He had also been the one to comfort her after a bad dream, to encourage her, and he was the one who had quietly hidden her away in the cupboard during her mother's rampages, stoically standing guard outside. He was a true friend, however eccentric his methods had sometimes been and still were. But this was a side of Fred she had never seen before. She could tell he was uncomfortable here, but his seriousness and silence, with no trace of his usual childishness worried her more than a little.

Fred knew it was coming, he could almost see the questions forming in Lizzie's mind. He wondered what she would ask about first. What was behind those brown eyes of hers? Come on, he thought, just get it over with.

"So...," she started, "what is this place?"

Fred sighed and stared into the fire another moment, slightly mesmerized by the flames, until Lizzie began to wonder if he'd heard her or if he just didn't want to answer.

"It's name is Elphyne, at least that's what most call it. It means the 'land of spirits'... the 'land of the dead'," he said at last.

"Is this where you're from? Your home?"

He blinked away from the fire and rubbed his eyes, not speaking.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't..."

"It's not that I don't want to talk about it," he interrupted. "It's that I don't really remember much." He turned to Lizzie. "Do you remember him asking me about my charges, about how long it's been?"

Lizzie nodded.

"Well, he's right, it's been a long time since I've been anything but what you know me as."

"How did you meet Stibbler?" she asked.

"Being here, in this house, is the furthest back I can remember. I don't know why I was here, or how I came to be here. He said I had been hurt, but I don't remember anything about that happening either. The only thing I know is that my name is Fred, other than that..," he shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Snot-face," he said, "the real "me" isn't as much fun as I am in your world."

Lizzie couldn't help but smile, "That's okay. So...being an imaginary friend is therapy?"

Fred grimaced. "I didn't know what else to do here," he said quietly. " I don't like thinking about things I can't remember. Being around kids helps me forget."

Lizzie considered it. She supposed that being a carefree child's imaginary friend was about as far removed from reality as one could get.

"How many charges have you had, other than Natalie and me?"

He shook his head. "I really don't know. Most charges I only stayed with for two or three years, some, like Natalie, even less. I don't remember anyone clearly before you, but then it's hard to forget being stuck in a jack-in-the-box for nearly 20 years.

Imagining Fred forgetting her almost brought tears to Lizzie's eyes. If he hadn't of gotten locked away in that damn box, she would just be another one of his nameless charges, she thought. Despite herself, she yawned.

Fred stood up. "You should get some sleep," he said. He spread the thickest blanket down in front of the fire and doubled it over. "Go ahead, I'll stay up a while."

She wanted to protest, but she could hardly keep her eyes open. "Alright, just for a little while," she said.

She lay down on the blanket and Fred covered her with the second one. "Hey, that's yours."

"I'm not cold. You'll be more comfortable with it than without it."

She was nearly asleep when Fred said quietly, "By the way, thank you."

She turned to look at him, "What for?"

"For trusting me...at the canyon."

The canyon! That seemed like weeks ago.

"You were right," she said, smiling, "it was worth it. Good-night, Fred."

"Good-night, Snot-face."

"Fred?"

"Yeah?"

"Stop calling me that."

Fred laughed, the first real laugh she'd heard from him since they had been here.

"Good-night, Lizzie."

When she woke, the fire was smaller and the room considerably cooler. It was still full dark and she had a frightening moment before she realized where she was. Something wasn't right, she could feel it, her heart seemed to pound loudly in her chest. At first she thought she might have had a nightmare and just couldn't remember it, until she heard a sound behind her. She turned around to see Fred, asleep, but muttering incoherently. As she watched, his head tossed from side to side as if struggling against something in his dream. She threw off the blanket and crawled over until she knelt beside him. She laid her hand on his forehead and ran her fingers through his red hair.

"Fred," she whispered, "Fred, wake up!"

His only response was a low moan. His head shook again.

"No...no...no..." he murmured over and over.

Lizzie leaned over him and shook him. The effect was immediate and terrifying. Before she could move, his hands fastened around her wrists and his blue eyes opened and focused on an unseen foe.

"Run!" he cried. "Run! Run!"

She had never realized just how strong he was. His grip on her wrists tightened painfully.

"Fred!" she shouted. "Wake up! Fred, listen to me, it's Lizzie! Fred, it's okay, WAKE UP!"

Suddenly he was still and quiet and his hands released her. She jumped back and watched him anxiously as he sat up and his eyes focused on the world around him.

"Fred, " she asked quietly, "are you alright?"

He looked at her. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"You had a nightmare."

"I...I don't remember dreaming anything," he said. He noticed her face was pale even in the dim firelight. Her fear was strong enough for him to feel it. "Did I frighten you?"

"No," she lied, not meeting his eyes. "I was just worried about you." She moved her arms behind her back and pulled her long sleeves down to cover her wrists which were probably quite colorful now, judging from the way they felt.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one watching over _you_?" he asked, not entirely happy about her lying to him. "I'm fine, go back to sleep."

Lizzie gave him a long look, no doubt trying to determine if he was really okay or not, thought Fred.

"Would you tell me if you weren't?" she asked.

"Probably not."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine." With that, Lizzie lay back down and threw the blanket over herself. It was a long time before she slept again, though.

Fred lay awake, long after he heard the slow, rhythmic breathing that meant Lizzie had fallen back asleep. He listened to the wind blowing against the walls of the house and the intermittent thunder which signaled a storm which would never come. It never rained, not here. He thought that maybe if it would - if it could- perhaps something vile could be washed away from this land, but it never did. So much like the storm he felt simmering inside himself whenever he was mortal again. The war between wanting to remember and wanting to forget. Now, without having even made the choice to fight, he felt the battle lines were being drawn. His future had changed the instant he had brought Lizzie here, into the other side of his life. He looked over at her...not a child anymore and far too old to be anyone's charge. If they were able to find a way to undo whatever had happened to her and she was able to return to her own world, what then? Would he come back to Elphyne and resume his assignments? Then his Lizzie - no, not his anymore - would forget him someday. Just one more thing he'd just as soon never remember.

* * *

Lizzie startled awake by the hissing of the fire being doused. She watched Stibbler, in the light from his oil lamp, pour the remaining water in his pail over the last smoldering embers. What an odd thing to do, she thought. Without the fire, it was wretchedly chilly and she wrapped the blanket around her as she stood up. She saw Fred sitting against the wall, asleep. It didn't strike her as a particularly comfortable position. Stibbler walked past Fred on his way to put the pail away, and Lizzie felt a unexpected wave of protectiveness wash over her as the goat-man stopped and gave Fred a long, appraising look. When he had moved on, she knelt beside Fred and studied his face in the dim light. She noticed for the first time how young he looked, and she wondered how old he truly was - surely not much more than herself. She hesitated to wake him, but as much as he probably needed sleep, she wasn't sure sleeping while the owner of the house was wandering around putting out the fire was the safest time for it.

Prepared to move quickly in case he reacted the same way as during his nightmare, she shook his shoulder gently.

"Fred..."

His eyes opened, he lost his balance and fell over.

"Morning," she said.

He picked himself up and found his bearings. "Well it's definitely not a good one, that's for sure." He shivered. "It's cold in here!"

"It won't be where you're goin'," said Stibbler. "Come on, you'd better be moving, time passes faster there than here."

Lizzie lent Fred a hand to help him up. As he stretched, she heard popping noises and winced despite herself. So much for sleeping sitting up. Stibbler motioned him over to where the fire had been.

"Where are we going?" asked Fred looking up. "Up the chimney?"

"Not hardly...follow me."

To their surprise, Stibbler stepped across the now cool remains of the fire to the other side. Fred and Lizzie followed him and found themselves in a hidden room with a small door about three feet high by two feet wide. He opened the door to reveal, not another room, but another door with another knob.

"Fred, what is this?" asked Lizzie

"Where are you sending us?" Fred asked Stibbler.

"Why, back the way you came, of course! You can imagine my surprise when one day I'm sitting, minding my own business, and all of a sudden a young man comes running through my fireplace as if the very hounds of Hell were after him!"

"Look," said Fred, "I'm grateful to you, but I'm not here for myself. I'm here to find help for Lizzie. Besides, I don't remember any of that."

"Whatever answers you seek, you will sooner find them there than here. Now stop killing time and go!"

Fred turned to Lizzie who shrugged her shoulders. "I guess we'd better go."

Fred took her hand and opened the second door out into what appeared to be a forest. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll be right behind you."


	7. Reunion

_"You think that I can't see right through your eyes,  
scared to death to face reality..._

_But where will you go,  
With no one left to save you from yourself?  
You can't escape the truth..._

_-Evanescence" _

* * *

It was dark again. Not an all consuming dark nothingness this time, but the normal darkness of night, lit by the moon. The door they had come through had disappeared after Fred had followed her though and Lizzie found herself in a forest- the pungent smell of earth and decaying leaves filled her senses along with the sweet scent of what smelled like honeysuckle on a hot day. There was a path, well worn of packed hard dirt, broken here and there by the roots of enormous trees which lined the way. There were quite a few large flowers scattered about, their petals drawn together and the buds bent over on their stems. It struck Lizzie that they almost seemed to be sleeping. As they walked a purplish mist swirled around their feet. She had the strangest feeling that they were being watched – they definitely weren't in Kansas anymore, that was certain.

The moment he had climbed through the door and left the threshold of Elphyne, Fred's heart felt lighter. He almost felt like skipping up the road. A pair of insects -_lightening bugs, he thought - _whizzed around his head, zapping each other with miniature bolts of lightening from their tails. He heard the trees whispering something, but it was too quiet for him to make out anything – merely a ripple of leaves, stirring in the wind. Stibbler said he had come from the door. Was this where he was from? For the first time in many, many years, he _tried _to remember. Everything seemed achingly familiar, like a dream- just on the edge of waking. Every time he tried to think about it, it seemed to fade further until it disappeared and he was left with only the swirling mist and sounds of the night.

Lizzie kicked a rock in front of her, and it went skittering over the ground until it disappeared into the vegetation, making a hissing sound as it flew through the grass.

"Ow!" cried a small voice.

Fred and Lizzie suddenly found themselves surrounded by many pairs of bright, glowing eyes. In the moonlight, she could see that the flowers indeed must have been sleeping, for now the ones nearest them regarded her with a scowl.

"What a stupid girl, " a large, darkly colored flower said. "Kicking rocks at all hours of the night while we're trying to sleep! What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Lizzie, surprised to find herself being berated by a plant. "I'm really sorry, I... Hey, Fred - the flower can see me!"

"Of course I can see you, what are you daft?""

"Oh, piss off!" said Fred, "Or I'll stomp on you!" He began walking closer to the flower, but Lizzie grabbed his arm to hold him back. She had an idea.

"Stop it, Fred! It's absolutely right. After all, such a beautiful flower definitely needs it's sleep." Fred looked at her like she had grown a third head, but held his tongue.

The complement worked exactly as Lizzie had hoped, for most flowers are rather vain creatures.

"I _am_ quite beautiful, aren't I?"

"Oh, very!" answered Lizzie. "And such delicate petals on your sturdy stem."

The flower tilted it's head daintily, as if preening. "Well, I do carry myself better than most."

"I hope you'll forgive us for waking you."

"Oh, well, no harm done, my dear. Was there something you were looking for?"

"Would you happen to know where this road leads?" asked Lizzie. She wasn't sure that a flower would know such things, but it couldn't hurt to check.

"Well," replied the flower, "these are the Tulgey Woods. If you keep on this road you will reach Marmoreal, but I'm sure that damnable cat will find you before you get that far."

"Cat?" asked Fred.

"Humph! I'm not answering the likes of you, worm-dung!"

"Come on, Fred." said Lizzie, taking his hand and pulling him after her. "I'm sure there are others for you to aggravate someplace else."

After they had cleared the flowers and passed over the next hill, Lizzie broke their silence.

"So, what do you think?"

"About what?"

"About all of this," she gestured at the forest surrounding them. "Does anything seem... familiar?"

"I don't know, " he said. "I don't recognize anything. It's more of a feeling – like I _should _recognize something. It feels, well, it just feels _right. _That's not the big question, though."

"Really? What's that?"

"If this really _is_ my home, why did I _leave_?"

They continued on silently, each lost in their own speculations. Lizzie, happy to be "real" again, could hardly believe this person beside her was the same 'Drop Dead Fred' of her childhood years. Being out of what she had taken for granted as his normal element, being mortal again, seemed to change him day by day. His past fascinated her even if he felt no compulsion to explore it himself. All that he once was, the person he must have been, was it hidden here, somewhere in this new realm? She thought finding the answer to that question might turn out to be considerably more exciting than returning to her dreary Earthly existence. Perhaps a detour of plans was in order.

Fred himself found the prospect of discovering his past neither fascinating nor exciting. On the contrary, his last statement haunted him more than a little. Why would he leave his home, what had happened to cause him to run to somewhere as God forsaken as Elphyne? He wished Lizzie hadn't seemed so interested in him remembering things. The good feeling he had when he arrived was slowly being superseded by the nervousness of what he might find waiting for him around the next corner. All he wanted was to find a way to get Lizzie home safely, and quickly. For the life of him, he had no idea how he was going to do that, which meant they would probably be here for more than a day or two. And then there was the fact that Lizzie actually seemed to be enjoying herself. He didn't have to feel for her emotions to figure _that_ out – she was nearly skipping down the path. He had a sneaking suspicion she was planning on taking the long way home, regardless of what he might dredge up about himself along the way – or maybe because of it.

As they neared a tree whose branches hung low over the path, the mist which had seemed to follow them swirled up from around their ankles. It moved up and over the closest branch where it materialized into a large grayish cat. It's huge blue-green eyes blinked at them through the semi-darkness.

"Please tell me your name's not Alice, " grumbled the cat. "One is really more than enough at times."

Without waiting for her answer, the cat disappeared from the branch and reappeared a second later in front of them, causing Lizzie to jump back in surprise. From this close she could clearly see the rows of what seemed to be rather sharp teeth in his overly large mouth as he grinned at her.

"N..no..," she stammered. "I'm Lizzie, and he's Fred."

The cat merely glanced at Fred before turning back to Lizzie. If he knew him, he showed no sign.

"So...Lizzie," he purred. "is there something you're looking for?"

While he talked he had begun to float around her, occasionally flipping end over end, so that she found herself paying more attention to his movements than to what he was saying.

"Oh! I'm sorry, what did you say?"

The cat disappeared and popped back in behind her. "Do you merely enjoy wandering through the woods at night or do you have some purpose here? I daresay the intelligence of the local flora is somewhat lacking if you're looking for conversation." He glanced sideways into the woods where quiet mutters of "damn cat!" could be heard.

"Listen, Fur-ball," said Fred, "we're not interested in talking with flowers or cats. We're here to find a way to get Lizzie home and then we'll be on our way."

"Sometimes what we seek is not always what we wish to find," said the cat cryptically. "And often we find that which we did not wish to seek." The cat popped out and in again in front of Fred, and regarded him briefly with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. "As for _you._..I think you'd better see the Hatter first. You're _quite_ late for tea."

With that the cat disappeared in a puff of purple smoke. Lizzie looked questioningly at Fred.

"Don't ask me! Your guess is as good as mine, " he said.

The cat had reappeared further up the road and was now watching them from a distance.

"Coming?" he called.

"Well, come on, " said Fred, taking Lizzie's hand. "Apparently we're having tea."

As they followed the cat through the woods, the sky became lighter and lighter until the beautiful, if not rather peculiar, forest was wholly visible around them. Plants of every bright and vivid color imaginable surrounded them and quite a few seemed to be watching them as they passed. Lizzie wondered if this road was seldom used because of all the attention they were receiving, although she mused that if she was rooted to the same spot day after day, any activity would be exciting.

She tried not to dwell on how bits and pieces of things around them fit together oddly in her mind. Talking flowers, a grinning cat wanting to know if she was 'Alice', a Hatter. It almost sounded like..., but no that was just a silly book- not a legend or myth or anything that anyone had ever believed to be _true._

After a short distance, they crested a small hill and below them in a clearing lay a most unusual sight. Towards one end of the clearing was a windmill, broken and in disrepair save the base of it which seemed to be a house of some sort. In front of the house sat a conglomerate of tables, seated end to end against each other, each being a different shape an hight and draped with white linens. The tables themselves were covered with mismatched china – cups, saucers, tea pots, and various other accouterments.

They paused at a large tree which seemed to hold great interest to Fred. He knocked on the bark a few times. Lizzie couldn't understand what was so fascinating and she told him so.

"There's a door here!" he told her.

"You'd best leave it be, " said the cat. Lizzie squinted but still saw nothing but bark.

The cat floated around to her far side, away from Fred and spoke quietly in her ear. "I don't know what has addled his brain," he said quietly, "but if you care for him, don't let him make a fool of himself down there. _He_ may not remember anything, but the Hatter does." The cat began to dissolve from the tail upward until only his head was visible.

"Wait!" said Lizzie. "What happened? Tell me!"

"Sorry, " said the cat. "I don't get involved in domestic disputes." He disappeared completely.

Fred noticed the tables. Well, as long as he was stuck here he might as well have some fun.

"Ooo...look! A party! I luuuv parties!" He started off down the hill and made it halfway before Lizzie was able to get in front of him to hold him back.

"Wait a minute, Fred! I don't think we should do anything to draw attention to ourselves. The cat said it was a bad idea."

"Lizzie, cats just like to mess with people's heads. Come on!" He tried to move past her. Lizzie, not to be deterred, held his arms fast and looked him in the eyes.

"Fred..., " she warned.

"Fine," he grumbled. "I'll behave, come on."

As they neared the tables, they could see a mangy looking jack rabbit and a mouse who was eating an olive skewered on a tiny sword. At the far end of the table sat a young woman with long blond hair, deep in conversation with the strange looking man seated at the head of the table. Lizzie supposed he must be the Hatter. He worn a green coat with a large scarf tied at his neck. His frizzy hair fell just past his shoulders, partially concealing his face which from what showed seemed to be a ghostly white color. On his head was a large black top hat adorned with a salmon colored sash.

The hare was the first to notice their presence. He let out a crazed laugh and announced, "Guests!"

The mouse turned her attention to them. "Well hello, dearies!" she exclaimed. "You must excuse the mess. It's been ages since we've had outsiders to tea... Hatter!"

The pair at the end of the table seemed to be too preoccupied with staring into each other's eyes to notice anything else. The mouse yelled again, "Hatter!" in a voice surprisingly loud for such a small creature.

The man in the hat at last turned towards the mouse. "What is it, Mally?" he said with a soft lisp. "We were just discussing..."

His eyes which had been focused on the mouse glanced up at Fred. The teacup he had been holding fell from his hand and broke as it hit the table. He stared at Fred as he rose from his chair. Lizzie looked at Fred and back at the Hatter whose eyes had changed from their original green to an odd amber color. Fred instinctively pulled Lizzie behind him as the man advanced on him and addressed him in thick brogue..

"Y'd best have a bloody good excuse for standin' at m' tea table, ye slurkin'..."

"Tarrant!" The girl had risen from the table and now went to his side, placing her hand softly on his arm. The instant she touched him, green flooded back into his irises, leaving only a thin ring of yellow around them. "What's wrong? Who are these people?"

Tarrant shook his head as if clearing his mind. "I'm sorry, Alice," he said with only a hint of accent. "Apparently we're having tea with ghosts today."

He moved back to his seat, picked up his broken teacup, and studied it sadly before setting it down gently.

Lizzie moved back beside Fred. "We're terribly sorry to have bothered you, sir," she said. "but Fred doesn't remember anything about his past or this place...at all."

The Hatter looked up and regarded Lizzie calmly for a moment and then turned to Fred. "You don't know who I am?"

"Um..I'm afraid not," said Fred. "and though it does seem to be a splendid tea party you have going on here, I think we'll just piss off now."

The Hatter ignored Fred. "If you don't remember me, then I'll show you the last place I remember _you_! Come with me." He walked away from the table towards the windmill house. Neither Fred nor Lizzie made a move to follow. "I can _make_ you follow, or you can do so of your own accord. I suggest the latter."

Alice came over to them. "I'm sorry, " she said. "he's rarely like this anymore, but when he is, it's best not to upset him further. Don't worry, I'll come with you."

The Hatter led Lizzie, Fred, and Alice to a path Alice recognized as the one she had been on long ago- riding on the brim of a hat. She ran to catch up with Tarrant, knowing this was not an easy road for him to travel, and clasped his hand in hers.

Lizzie and Fred followed Alice and the Hatter several paces back. Fred reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled along by Lizzie whose anxious anticipation at the possibility of solving one piece of his puzzled history was nearly palatable. Fred felt slightly nauseous. His hand in Lizzie's was clammy and he wished he could wipe it off, but that would mean letting go of hers and right now she was the only thing keeping him from running off – away from the freak in the hat who claimed to know him.

Lizzie didn't know what to think. She was now positive she knew where they were, but some things were very...different. She kept her observations to herself as now didn't seem to be the best time to strike up a conversation with either person in front of her. If this was indeed Wonderland (and how weird it felt just thinking that!), and _the_ Alice, then she was considerably older than in the stories. Hadn't she been six or seven when she had fallen down that rabbit hole? It had been a while, but Lizzie didn't remember anything about her _staying_ there, nor did she recall getting any impressions of future romantic entanglements between Alice and the Mad Hatter either, though she supposed that _this_ Alice must be in her early twenties now. She watched them, their heads inclined slightly towards each other as they walked closely, hand in hand. They seemed very much in love. Lizzie realized absently that her and Fred's hands were clasped together as well, though palm to palm only, as one would hold a child's hand. She wondered fleetingly what it would feel like to interlace her fingers in his. She shook her head, wondering where that idea had come from.

The path they took gradually opened until it became a wide road, the branches of the trees arching high above it in a canopy of green. For such a large thoroughfare it seemed rarely traveled, and the ground was covered by a thick carpet of leaves – unmoved where they had fallen. It was here that the Hatter led them off the main road and into the woods. The trees here were much younger and it was plain to see that where they now stood had once been a large clearing. Remnants of many houses stood crumbling and broken amidst the tall grasses. Of the larger trees still standing, many were broken off halfway up their trunks and several showed signs of fire damage. They continued to follow him past the houses and deeper into the forest until they came to another clearing, this one larger even than the first, and Lizzie saw that they had entered a very old, but very populated cemetery of sorts. Dozens upon dozens of markers, some wooden planks, some merely large stones, and others tablets with names engraved upon them, told of the dead buried beneath them. Tarrant led them past these marked graves towards the far end of the clearing. Here the sod rose in 2 large rectangular sections, each approximately seven feet wide and what had to be hundreds of feet long. They looked suspiciously like mass graves to Lizzie, the kind seen in documentaries of the darker days of Earth's affairs. If they were, she shuddered to think of what could have killed so many so quickly. Past these stood a solitary tombstone, unreadable from their distance.

The Hatter stopped abruptly, turned, and walked back to where Fred was standing. Grabbing his arm, Tarrant hauled Fred over to the stone and threw him roughly to the ground before it.

"I'd say that I buried ya' myself, but I didn't find any pieces!"

Upon the marker was etched the name 'Frederick Hightopp'.


	8. The Arrival

"_Every morning I put it on -  
I walk outside and I am gone.  
And I don't seem to mind anymore.  
I can't think what it was like  
before I wore it all the time."_  
-Blue Man Group

* * *

"That can't be _me!_" cried Fred. "You've gotten me mixed up with someone else!"

"Don' tell me it s'not you'!" shouted Tarrant. "I think I'd know m' own brether!"

Alice gasped, "You mean...he's your _brother_?"

Tarrant closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Aye," he said more calmly. "Even if ye do blether like an Uplander and look like y've been livin' with th' bridge trolls." The Hatter helped Fred up from the ground. "And since I'd dearly love t' know what the _Bloody Hell_ happened, we'll be vistin' Marmoreal. Mirana should be able t' help him find his memory again."

"Do_ I_ have any say in this?" asked Fred, indignant. "Has it occurred to any of you that maybe I don't _want_ to remember?"

Tarrant's eyes swirled with amber, threatening to overtake the green. He gestured to the long mounds behind them. His voice was deadly quiet. "Do y'know what these are?" Fred shook his head and he continued, louder. "These'r our parents, our brothers, sisters, cousins, friends... Every man, woman, and _child_ from that ever lived from Witzend an' Iplam! For more than fifteen years, I've thought I was th' last one alive – until today. So ya' go on, Freddie...You go on and tell 'em ya' don't want t' remember, but if ya' do, ya' might as well be rottin' under that dirt along with 'em!"

Fred gave him a long look. "What happened?" he asked softly.

Tarrant shook his head, "That's not for me t' be tellin'...I don't know _your_ side of th' story." He turned back to the road. "We should start now. It's early enough t' make Marmoreal by evenin'."

Fred went to Lizzie who was still looking at the headstone. He nudged her gently. "Hey," he said gently, "I guess we'd better go."

She looked up at him. "So that's you, huh?"

He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her while leading her away from it. "I don't know, but I guess we're going to find out – one way or another."

Together they followed Tarrant and Alice back to the woods.

The road from the Tulgey Wood into Marmoreal passed back by the windmill house and so the hare, whose name turned out to be Thackery, and Mally, the dormouse, joined them for the journey. As they cleared the woods, other roads merged with their main one, and soon they were joined by other travelers. Those carrying wagon loads of supplies crowded the road until they were obliged to separate their small group to make way. Tarrant motioned for Fred to join him up ahead while Alice remained further back with Lizzie. Lizzie took advantage of the opportunity to ask about where they were.

"Am I correct in thinking that this is Wonderland?" she asked.

"Wonderland!" Alice exclaimed happily. "You must have read the book, yes?"

Lizzie looked at her, dumbfounded. "Y...yes, but, how is that possible? That book was written over a century ago! How can you possibly still be alive...and young?"

Alice sighed, "Time is funny that way, sometimes it seems to forget us completely here. Before I returned for the last time, I wrote down what had happened to me on my first two visits here and had them sent to a family friend who eventually published them. Nivens, the white rabbit in the stories, found a copy for me on one of his trips above."

"So...the Hatter.."

"Tarrant!"

"The disappearing cat..."

"Chess! You've met him?"

"Well, yes, in the woods. He brought us to the tea party and then disappeared."

"Figures, rotten cat!"

"So, it's all true... Not a story at all!"

"Well, for the most part. The pictures in the book didn't seem to do much justice, but what could one expect from someone who's never actually been there?"

"But, the stories don't mention you staying or coming back, and in both stories you're just a child."

"No," explained Alice. "I didn't write anything about my third visit - two years ago by Underland years, thirteen years after I came the first time."

Alice then proceeded to tell Lizzie about her third visit to Underland, about the Red Queen and the Jabberwocky. When her story ended, Lizzie was confused.

"So, you left again? But obviously you returned."

"I was gone for almost six months above, to settle my father's estate and make sure my mother was provided for. Every day I spent away from Underland felt twice as long as normal. It took me leaving to realize that this was my home. And Tarrant...he believed in me from the very beginning. After the Red Queen took control of Underland, the Oraculum showed me returning to slay the Jabberwocky. All those years, he waited for me to return. All my life, he has been my constant – the one who has always been there for me." she said. "But enough about me! Chess is forever complaining about how I go on and on. What about you? Tell me _your_ story."

Alice listened while Lizzie talked about her childhood, and her mother, and about Fred. She told her about loosing him when she was seven, how he had returned, and about everything that had happened to them since then. In the end, Alice found herself wondering if their stories were really so different, after all.

* * *

So far, today was winning the race for the worst day Fred could remember, save for maybe the day he was shut up in that damn jack-in-the-box. He walked along with Tarrant, without speaking, trying in vain to forget the things he had told him in the graveyard. His mind kept replaying the images of those long, silent, mounds of earth, and unlike the ones that would have told him what had happened, those memories had apparently decided to stick around. He would have gladly been rid of those as well, but he knew that the opportunity for escaping again had already passed him by. As they crested the last hill leading to Marmoreal, he wished that Lizzie wasn't so far back. She was talking to Alice, though, so he let her be.

At last Marmoreal with its gleaming sliver parapets stood before them. They passed through the walls into the outer court and were greeted with the magnificence of Marmoreal in spring. The courtyard was filled with apple trees, all in full bloom. The last dying rays of evening sunlight streamed through the boughs casting the ground into a maze of light and dark shadows. A breeze caught the loose petals and brought them swirling to the ground like snowflakes, blanketing it in a sea of white and pink.

Lizzie caught up with Fred and took his arm. "Remember when I was little, how we used to wish it would snow in the summer?"

Fred grinned at her. "I seem to remember packing your mother's freezer full of snow to save it 'till it was warm outside."

She snickered, "I forgot about that! We packed it so full that it jammed up the ice maker and flooded the whole kitchen."

He smiled slightly, a far away look in his eyes. "Life was a lot simpler then."

Tarrant stopped before they entered the main keep and gave Fred a disapproving once over. "We'd best not be usin' the main entrance. Wouldn't want anything t' mar your sterlin' reputation, Freddie," he said, rolling his eyes. "Though in your present state I'm not sure anyone would be knowin' y' anyhow."

"Do you have a problem with how I look?" asked Fred.

"I'm more surprised _you _don't." he answered. Tarrant led them from the main path through the inner gates to another entrance on the other side of the castle. "I'm sure Chess has already informed Mirana of our arrival."

No sooner had he mentioned the cat than he appeared, swimming beside them. "You called?" he purred. "The White Queen is waiting for you in the kitchen. She thought it might be a bit less...populated than the Great Hall."

Chess led them through a maze of passageways deeper into the heart of the castle. Fred found himself battling a bad case of nerves. His legs felt like Jell-o, his hands were sweaty, and he was sure his heart could be heard pounding from several feet away. He thought that this must be what the condemned felt like as they were led to their executioner. As if sensing his unease, Lizzie took his hand. Though comforting, he noticed her hand was just as clammy as his.

Finally they entered a large area, set up as a kitchen. Here Tarrant, Alice, and Mally took their leave of them; Alice promising to find Lizzie the next day, while Thackery followed them into the room. In the center was a long table, and near one end was an old-fashioned wood-burning cook stove. Towards the other side of the room was another table laid out with objects reminiscent of a high school chemistry lab. It was from around this table that the sole person in the room approached them. Her hair was as white as the winter snow. Her lips, colored a dark burgundy, contrasted strikingly with her fair, almost translucent skin. Her dress, also white, shimmered with silver threads, and upon her head sat a crown. Lizzie felt subconsciously homely just looking at her. She was surprised when the woman addressed her first.

"You must be Lizzie," she said, smiling kindly. "Welcome to Underland. I'm sorry your visit has been so...unsettling so far."

"Thank you, your majesty."

"Please, call me Mirana. Any friend of Freddie is a friend of mine."

At this, Mirana turned to Fred. She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath before looking up at him. To his (and Lizzie's) dismay, Mirana placed a hand gently against his cheek and shook her head slightly, as in disbelief. "Freddie...," she whispered. "I can't tell you how many hearts you broke when we thought you were dead. It's good to see you. I will need time to devise a remedy for your memory problem, so I'm afraid you'll have to be in the dark, so to speak, for a bit longer."

"I don't have a problem with that," he said, relieved. He was more than a little confused as to why he would be such close friends with a queen.

"No...I didn't suppose you would," she answered. "Thackery! I believe the bread is ready. I'm sorry, I'm sure you two must be famished, but today is a rest day for the cooks so there isn't much around. There is cheese and fresh bilberry jam for the bread, though. When you're finished, the footmen will see you to your rooms. You should find everything you need there, but if not, please don't hesitate to ask. I must take my leave now, I'm sure everyone is wondering where I've disappeared to." She bid them both a good night's sleep and disappeared out the door.

When she had gone, Lizzie and Fred found themselves alone with the footmen, which happened to be fish (scooting along upright on their tails), and Thackery who at the moment seemed obsessed with balancing a tea pot on his head.

"Hungry?" asked Fred.

"Starving!" replied Lizzie.

They ate in silence for the most part, enjoying the simple meal. Lizzie was halfway through her second slice of bread and jam when the irony of the situation struck her.

"Fred..."

"Mmph?" he said, with his mouth full.

"Do you realize this is the first time we've ever eaten an actual meal together?"

"I've eaten with you before."

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "I don't mean stealing my Cheeto's when I was six," she said. "I mean actually _supposed_ to be together, eating, at the same table."

Fred smiled at her, "Nice, isn't it?"

When they had finished, they followed the fish around the corner and up a flight of stairs (which the fish hopped up on their tails) where they entered a wide hall with doors on either side.

"M'lady," said one fish, addressing Lizzie, "if you would follow me. Sir, Shaguar will show you to your room."

Fred turned to Lizzie. "Well, I guess this is the end of the line..."

"Seems strangely familiar," she said, smirking up at him.

"Don't worry," he teased. "This time I won't make you kiss me good-bye."

Lizzie grinned and bid him good-night, and they went their separate ways for the first time in over three days.

* * *

The feeling of being alone, in his own room, safe, and mortal all at the same time was something Fred's truncated memory had no experience with. He looked around the room. It was comfortably furnished with a dresser, a bench with cushions, a tall bed that looked indubitably cozy, and a basin with soap, water, and other necessities. Fred had no idea what he should do. Tarrant's comments about his appearance came back to him and he decided the first thing he would _not_ do would be to look in that mirror hanging over the basin. When they were traveling from the Tulgey Wood, he had been confused by a dark shape that seemed to follow him until he realized at last that he was seeing his shadow. In Lizzie's world, he had no shadow, no reflection. His clothes did not get dirty, his hair did not grow, nature didn't call. Now he felt grimy, tired, and sure that if he looked into that mirror, something freakish would look back at him.

He glanced down at himself. The clothes he was wearing were the only one's he'd ever remembered having. How long had he been dressed like this? Suddenly, the urge to get rid of them was overpowering. He ripped open the drawers until he found a clean change of clothes. Self-consciously he slid the bolt through on the door before stripping his old ones off and putting on the simple white button-up shirt and the brown pants he'd found in the dresser. He kicked the other clothes under the bed, not wishing to see them again, and unwilling to pick them up. He blew out the lamp and crawled up onto the bed where he collapsed immediately into a fitful sleep which would be broken twice by nightmares he wouldn't remember.


	9. Box of Yesterday

"_Starry, starry night.  
Paint your palette blue and gray,  
look out on a summer's day,  
with eyes that know the darkness in my soul..._

_Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain,  
weathered faces lined in pain,  
are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand."  
-_Don McLean

* * *

A knock at the door woke Lizzie from her dreamless slumber. She got out of bed and opened the door to find a girl holding a tray.

"Pardon me, Miss," she said, "but the Queen thought you might like to break your fast soon. Alice asks that you meet her in the courtyard after you're finished. The footman will show you the way."

Lizzie thanked her, took the tray, and closed the door. She sat it on the bed, examining the contents. There was a bowl of fruit (none of which she recognized), some pastries with a bright purplish-pink jam that reminded her of the elderberry her grandmother use to put up, and a glass of orange-colored juice. When she'd finished, she began looking around for something to wear. There were dresses in the wardrobe, but they looked so, well, _fancy,_ that she wasn't sure she felt comfortable wearing them. She opened the drawers until she found a dark green skirt and cream colored blouse with long sleeves. She brushed her hair with the brush she'd found by the basin. The footman showed her out to the courtyard where she found Alice setting on a bench, reading a book.

"Good-morning!" said Alice, looking up. "How did you sleep?"

"Quite well, thank you," replied Lizzie, taking a seat next to Alice on the bench.

"The castle can be a bit daunting your first time here, so I wanted to talk with you before Mirana rushed you off to get ready. Sorry if I woke you too early."

"No, that's okay. Ready for what?"

"Oh, there's always something going on here. Apparently the word has spread about your friend's arrival and quite a few people have invited themselves over for brunch, lunch, and any other meals we may be having today."

"Hmm... I was meaning to ask about that," said Lizzie. "Fred seems very...popular." She was having a hard time thinking of him as someone people would go out of their way to meet.

"That's what I gathered. Tarrant didn't have much to say about it when I asked him, only that he kept to himself most of the time unless he was with the children – he was some sort of teacher or something."

"Really?" she asked, intrigued. That would certainly explain a few things, like why he would choose to become a child's imaginary friend (though without him remembering anything of his previous life, the coincidence was astounding). She had little doubt the Fred she was just beginning to know had been an excellent teacher. "It's hard to imagine, I've only known him as what he became after he left Underland."

"Well, you know more than I," said Alice. "If I met him on one of my visits here as a child, I don't remember it."

"Actually, I wanted to ask you, without Fred around, about what happened...when Fred disappeared."

Alice looked nervously down at her hands. "We're not supposed to talk about it to him – Mirana's orders. She said he needs to remember it himself."

"I don't have any intentions of talking with him about it, but I need to know. Otherwise I won't be able to understand what he's remembering."

Alice gave her a long look. "I agree, but all I can tell you is what I've been told. It happened during the reign of the Red Queen, about fifteen years ago, by Underland standards. There was a festival of some sort at Hightopp Hill, the place we were at yesterday. Without warning, the Jabberwocky attacked the clan. Tarrant escaped because he was charged with getting Mirana to safety so he rode off to Marmoreal with her instead of staying to fight. When he returned, everyone was dead or missing. At first he thought it had been an attack on Mirana since she had been visiting the festival that day, but when he went to get help from the other clans, he found they had also been slaughtered. Everyone from the clans in the hills of Witzend and the plains of Iplam had suffered the same fate. Every man, woman, and child murdered in cold blood. The Red Queen had sent her entire army out that day and Tarrant was the only one of hundreds to survive...and Fred, apparently."

Lizzie now understood Tarrant's actions the day before. How could one endure such sorrow? And then, over a decade later your long dead brother waltzes up to your tea table with no idea what's going on or who he is. Then she thought of Fred. Wonderfully carefree, eccentric, always smiling Fred and she thought of all the pain that lay silently waiting for him to remember. She felt hot tears burning in her eyes.

"Fred...," she said softly. "What will become of him...when he remembers?"

"I'm so sorry, Lizzie," answered Alice. "I don't know."

They sat in silence until the girl who had brought her breakfast came up to Lizzie.

"Excuse me, Miss, but the Queen asks that you be appropriately attired for this evening. If you would follow me, please."

Lizzie turned to Alice. "Thank you for telling me what I needed to know."

Alice gave her a sad smile, "I'm sorry, I fear I have cast a dark cloud over your heart. Please, try to have a good time tonight – for your friend's sake."

Lizzie nodded and turned to follow the messenger girl, vowing to put all dark thoughts out of her mind until she _had_ to think of them. "What's your name?" she asked as they walked through the halls.

"Raenie, Miss," the girl seemed over-joyed to have been spoken to.

"That's a beautiful name. Please, just call me Lizzie."

"Wait 'till you see your dress, Lizzie! It's gorgeous!"

* * *

If he had to bang on the door one more time, Tarrant thought, he was just going to break down the bloody thing and drag him out of bed. Finally he heard the bolt slide back and a very tired looking Fred opened the door.

"What the hell do _you _want?" asked Fred, yawning.

"Bloody Hell! You look worse'n ya' did yesterday!" Tarrant grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the room. "Here," he said, thrusting some sort of pastry at him. "Eat this."

Fred jerked his arm away from Tarrant. "Hey! I'm not running who knows where with you! What's going on?"

"What's goin' on is that I have t' get ya presentable 'fore Mirana sees y' again."

"What are you talking about?"

Tarrant stared at him. "You really want t' walk around lookin' like that all day? Least ya found some clean clothes. Come on."

First things first, thought Fred. "Where's Lizzie?"

"How should I know? I'm sure she'd rather see ya' _after_ ya' get cleaned up though."

"This is the way she's always seen me," he said quietly. Just how bad _did_ he look?

Tarrant looked at him as if he'd suddenly grown another head. "I think she needs t' raise 'er standards a bit," he said bluntly.

Fred felt his cheeks turning red. Tarrant clapped him on the back.

"Don't worry, Freddie, we'll fix ya' up – good as new."

* * *

_'Surely they didn't mean for her to wear this!',_ thought Lizzie as she looked at herself in the mirror. She'd never seen a dress so beautiful, much less tried one on. "Are you sure it's okay for me to wear this?" she asked one of the women who had been helping her get dressed.

"Now why wouldn't it be?" the woman asked, surprised. "'Tis beautiful on you!"

"It's just, it's quite a bit fancier than what I'm used to."

"My dear, you'd best get used to fancy here in Marmoreal," she said with a smile.

The dress itself was two parts. The first was a chemise made of a cream colored linen which gathered around the top in a wide, deep, collar that came just over her shoulders with long sleeves, gathered above and below her elbows, and at the wrists with long cuffs. It laced in the back, not unlike a corset. On top of this was an over-dress of soft, dark green velvet with gold trim. The bodice came down lower than the first dress to just above the rise of her breast. It tied high above her waist with a wide gold sash. The dress seemed to accent parts of her that she was sure her mother would find inappropriate to be accenting. She felt pretty.

As Lizzie was admiring the dress, Mirana entered the room. The maids bowed to her and left the room while Mirana approached Lizzie.

"Lizzie! I'm so glad the dress fits you!"

Lizzie spun around to face her. "It's magnificent! I can't thank you enough for your hospitality!"

Mirana waved her complement aside. "I assure you, it's no trouble at all. I can't have you outdone by all the sillies visiting. Though why they think Freddie might give them a second glance just because he doesn't remember turning them down the first time is beyond me."

Lizzie couldn't contain her curiosity over Fred's previous life. "I beg your pardon, but what do you mean?"

Mirana looked at her with a bemused expression. "I forget that you aren't familiar with Freddie's history. We grew up together, Tarrant, Freddie, my sister, and I. The Hightopps have always been employed in the service of the king or queen in some capacity or another since anyone can remember. Their father was the Royal Hatter here for my father. My sister, Iracebeth, was actually quite smitten with Freddie, but he has a reputation of turning down _every_ invitation of that sort." She grinned at Lizzie. "He's had quite a few."

Lizzie tried to imagine Fred as some sort of "chick magnet" and had to cough to keep from laughing. She just couldn't see it, what with his wild clothes and crazy hair, though Tarrant _had _said something about no one recognizing him now.

"Alice said Fred was some sort of a teacher," she said, remembering Alice's words earlier.

"Sort of," said Mirana, "though probably not the kind you're thinking. He didn't so much teach reading or writing as teaching the children _about_ things – plants, animals, how to use or understand them. I think in your world you call it survival training. You see..." She paused then, as if deciding what to say. "Freddie..._knows_ things. He can see things, sense things happening before they do. Sometimes he can feel the emotions of other people he's closest to. He's very...unique."

Lizzie remembered the road in Elphyne when she wondered what Fred was avoiding and how he could see all the creatures that she could not. Would he have even been able to see her without his gift?

"Oh, before I forget," continued Mirana, "I wanted to ask you about your hair."

The quick change in topic caught Lizzie off guard. "Um..what? My hair?" Why would anyone care about her short, plain-Jane hair?

"Yes, do you like it short? I took the liberty of mixing up some lengthening potion in case you didn't."

"You mean you can make it longer?"

Mirana smiled. "You'll find that somethings can be changed easily here in Underland, other things not so much. Hair is one of the easy things."

"I hate my hair short."

"Well then, this is just the thing." She handed Lizzie a small bottle. "It's one sip per inch, so I'd say you'll need to drink half the bottle."

She uncorked the top and sniffed it. It smelled like cinnamon. She brought it to her lips and drank half the bottle. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then she felt an odd tingling on her head as her hair started to grow. When it had finished, it fell half-way to her waist as it had before her mom had convinced her to cut it. There was something not quite right about it though – it wasn't' straight. Her hair, no matter what she did was always straight, and she hated it. Now it was beautiful. It seemed to have a life of it's own as large curls wound around themselves and each other down her back.

"Wow! That's some potion!"

"It just gives you what you want," she said, smiling. "Now, I must get back. Just have someone show you to the Great Hall when you're finished here."

Lizzie took one last look in the mirror as she twirled around and then asked one of the footmen to show her to the Great Gall. It turned out to be not so much of a hall as it was great. The ceiling seemed to stretch up several stories and it was easily the size of a half a football field. There were already many people there. Lizzie noticed that a large percentage seemed to be females between the ages of 20 and 40, all dressed in their finery.

* * *

"I don't see why I can't just go back to my room," moaned Fred. Ever since Tarrant had forced him into a room where people had spent far too long fussing over his appearance, he had been getting strange looks from those he passed, and if one more girl started giggling to her friends behind his back, he was just going to stick a bag over his head. It was all very disconcerting. The only bright side was that he liked his clothes. Evidently they were his own – things that he'd left behind at Marmoreal when he disappeared had been stored instead of discarded.

"Better get used to it while you're 'n Marmoreal," Tarrant was saying. "There's no woods t' run off t' and hide 'n here."

They entered the Great Hall and Fred balked at the number of people. He promptly turned to walk back out, but Tarrant caught his arm.

"Lizzie's in there," Tarrant said simply.

Fred found himself torn between wanting to find Lizzie and wanting to run away. He decided the best plan would be to find Lizzie quickly and then drag her out of there. He turned back to the hall.

"Watch out for th' red-head," said Tarrant as he pushed him back into the room.

Fred couldn't see anything in the sea of people so reluctantly he climbed the stairs of a stage set in one side of the hall until he could see over the crowd.

Lizzie stood against the wall, uncomfortable in the crowd of people she didn't know. She wished Fred were there, she hadn't seen him all day. A whisper started somewhere off in front of her and soon swatches of quiet conversations found her ears.

"Oh my gosh...he doesn't look a day older..."

"Nah, he looks older. He was only 24 on Horunvendush day. He looks at least 30 now..."

"He looks even better than he did then, you know men get better looking with age..."

"Some men, not your uncle Claude!" They giggled.

Lizzie looked around and tried to figure out who they were talking about.

"...traveling with a woman!"

"A _woman_? That can't be right, everyone knows Freddie's afraid of women."

"...such a waste..."

Lizzie nearly choked when she realized they were talking about Fred. She looked around for him, but all she saw was a man standing on the stairs of a stage across the room, looking around as if trying to find someone. He was tall, with cropped red hair, nicely dressed in a dark brown frock coat (like a pirate would wear, she thought), white shirt, and brown pants. He was strikingly handsome. She was still staring at him when his eyes met hers and he smiled - only then realizing that she was looking at Fred.

He jumped down from the stairs to make his way to Lizzie, but the crowd seemed to close in around him. Fred wished he was Drop Dead Fred again and could just disappear or pop over to where he wanted to be. Life was so much easier when he was invisible, now he felt like a fly trapped under a magnifying glass. He mustered up all the courage he could find and said in a loud voice, "Excuse me, could I get out, please?"

The crowd parted reluctantly enough to make a narrow aisle for him to pass through to the door. Lizzie took the opportunity to squeeze past the others until she found herself standing at the end of the path the crowd had made. Fred saw her and started to make his way through to her when a woman in the crowd with flaming red hair caught his arm and pulled his head over to her. His face turned beet red as she whispered something in his ear. He finally managed to wrench himself free and found Lizzie near the door.

"Nice hair," he said, twirling it around his fingers.

"Yeah, and if you cut it off in my sleep _this _time, I'll stab you with the scissors!" She twisted her fist in his side as if with a knife.

"I won't, I promise." He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Do you want..."

"...to get out of here?" she finished.

"Yeah." He grabbed her hand and led her to the nearest door. The walked though quite a few twists and turns before Lizzie asked, "Fred, where are we going?"

"I have no idea," he laughed.

"Stop for a minute," she said, turning towards him. "Let me look at you."

"Lizzie...," he groaned.

"Well, you look really nice..."

"Not you, too! I'm just going to put a bag over my head."

"Why? Should I tell you you're ugly? It's nothing to be ashamed of," she said, ruffling his now shorter hair.

Fred decided to take a different approach. His eyes fell briefly to the low-cut bodice of her dress and then back up. "Nice dress, Lizzie. Do you think your mother would approve of it?" He laughed at her blush, and she punched his arm.

"Where'd ya' steal the coat?" she asked.

"You like it? Apparently it's mine. There's a whole chest of stuff that I left here."

"Really? Let's see what's in it!"

"I don't' know," he said. "It kinda gives me the creeps."

"Come on...please, Fred?" She smiled sweetly up at him.

He sighed, she knew how to push his buttons too well. "Fine, come on..."

The chest was in one of the basement storage rooms. They finally gave up trying to find their way on their own and asked a footman for directions. Fred grabbed a lamp from the hallway outside and brought it into the room with them.

The trunk was long, but not very wide and about 18" deep. He opened it and took out several sets of clothes, stacking them neatly to the side on the floor. Underneath the clothes were nearly a dozen bound leather books. Lizzie picked one up and gasped as she thumbed through it. It was filled with drawings, sketched by an expert hand. Page after page of plants, flowers, herbs, and trees – all labeled meticulously with notes to the side describing medicinal uses, growing season, root structure, and other things she didn't understand. She recognized the handwriting as Fred's. She put down the first book and picked up another. This one was filled with all manner of creatures, drawn and labeled just as neatly and precisely as the others.

"Fred," she said, stunned, "these are amazing! I didn't know you could draw like this!"

Fred merely shrugged. "Me neither," he said.

All the books were the same size and shape, each containing a partial catalog of Underland creatures or flora. Two of the books were empty. With the books was a collection of writing instruments, watercolors, and chalks, and a large folder which Lizzie gently removed.

Inside the folder were more drawings, but these were more of a personal nature. There were drawings of landscapes, breathtakingly beautiful, tinted with watercolors. There were people - old, young, men, women, and children. Their faces seemed so alive - she could see the pride, compassion, pain, and love in their eyes and smiles. There were several sheets with faces of children, each portrait about three inches tall, nine drawings per sheet. They were labeled below with the name of the child. It reminded her of pictures in a yearbook, and she realized that this was probably Fred's equivalent of such. She looked at the children, each so young with eyes full of wonder, rosy cheeked, and smiling brightly. Her heart broke. These children were all dead. In her hands were the memories that would soon haunt Fred forever.

"What's wrong?" he asked, turning towards her.

"Nothing," she said quickly, remembering what Mirana had said about Fred being able to sense other's emotions.

He studied her face. "This is what I'll remember, isn't it?" he asked sadly. "All of this...," he looked at the children, "all of them."

"I'm sorry, Fred. I don't know what to say. I wish there was something I could do to make it easier."

He looked at her for a long moment. "Just...don't leave, yet."

She smiled at him and shook her head. "I won't."

They stacked up the books and were putting them back in the chest when Lizzie noticed a latch along the bottom edge of the trunk.

"Hey," she said. "I think there's something else in the bottom."

They took out everything again and saw that what looked like the bottom of the chest was actually the lid of another compartment. Fred unlatched and opened it. The first thing he pulled out was a kilt. The next thing was a huge claymore.

He slowly unsheathed the blade and balanced it in his hands. There was something vaguely comforting about it's weight and that in itself was unsettling. He sheathed it and put it back in the trunk along with everything else and closed the lid.

"I guess we'd better see if there's any supper left," he said, scooting the trunk back up against a wall.

"I think we should see if Thackery's in the kitchen and skip the crowd."

Fred wholeheartedly agreed.


	10. One Small Spark

_"We were both young, when I first saw you._  
_I close my eyes and the flashback starts,  
I'm standing there, on a balcony in summer air._

_See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns.  
See you make your way through the crowd  
and say hello, little did I know..."_

-Taylor Swift

* * *

Mirana found them in the kitchen, finishing their supper. Alice was with her.

"Ah, good, here you are! I was beginning to think you were lost in the basement somewhere," she said.

Lizzie and Fred smiled at each other. Then Fred's smile faltered and his face drained of color. Lizzie saw that Mirana had taken a small vial out from the folds in her dress. Was this it? Fred's 'cure'? Lizzie got up from the table and moved around beside Fred as he stood up as well. She reached out and took his hand- entwining her fingers with his in a subtle effort to show him that she wasn't going anywhere. He squeezed her hand gently.

"There's no need to look so glum," said Mirana. "This won't work, yet." She held up the small vial. "Unfortunately sometimes cures are a bit tricky. This one will require you to be somewhere else before you use it."

"Somewhere else?" asked Lizzie.

"Yes, Freddie will need to travel to the Crystal Cavern for the potion to work."

"How far away is that?" The further, the better thought Fred.

"The cavern is three days journey to the northwest border of Witzend. Our best horse has already volunteered to escort you and I've taken the liberty of having him provisioned." She looked at Lizzie. "I assumed that you would wish to accompany him." Lizzie nodded, gratefully.  
"Well, then," she said, handing the vial to Fred, "the footmen will show you back to your rooms. You leave at dawn. Lizzie, I've left clothes suitable for traveling for you in your room. There is a cloak in the wardrobe that you will need to take as well." She turned to Fred. "Freddie...get some sleep, please. I will see both of you in the morning."

Lizzie felt somewhat like a child being told to go to bed. Mirana motioned that they should follow the footmen from the room and didn't seem to leave much choice in the matter.

After they left, Alice turned to Mirana. "I didn't realize there was anything magical about the Crystal Cavern."

"There's not," answered Mirana. "The potion would work just fine here as anywhere."

"What?" Alice asked, confused. "But then, why did you send them off halfway across Underland?"

"I thought a journey would do them good."

Alice didn't know whether to be disgusted or amused. "So, you're playing match-maker?"

Mirana shook her head sadly. "After he drinks that potion, Freddie's going to need something to live for..."

Mirana remembered another day in this same kitchen...oh, so long ago. She had once again tried to set Freddie up with a girl she thought he'd approve of, with no success.

"I appreciate your concern," he had said, "but since I'm neither lonely nor old, _please _stop trying to help me, Mirana."

"I don't know what you're waiting for," said Tarrant, who had been with them. This was somewhat of a bone of contention between the brothers with Freddie usually telling Tarrant to shut up and look after himself, and Tarrant pointing out that the younger Freddie was much more more eligible than he was.

That day, Freddie had turned angry eyes on his brother and said sarcastically, "I don't know Tarrant, I guess I just haven't found my_ Alice_, yet!" and stormed out of the room.

Mirana hoped that perhaps Freddie had finally found her.

* * *

Fred took off his coat and threw it on the bed. He didn't feel like sleeping yet. What he really wanted to do was talk to Lizzie and apologize for getting her into this mess. He opened the door that led out to the terrace. It was a sort of communal balcony with the doors of three rooms opening up to it. Lizzie's room wasn't one of these, but he'd managed to see where it was this time on the way back from the kitchen. He felt sure he could pick it out from the courtyard. He looked over the edge and saw that he wasn't very high up, only about 15 feet, and the bricks on the side of the castle jutted out at regular intervals. It seemed do-able. Full night was just coming on and if he didn't hurry, she'd probably be asleep.  
He went to the far edge of the terrace, climbed over the stone railing, and found footholds on the bricks. In seconds he was on the ground. Fred walked around to the other side of the wall to where the rooms of the hallway adjacent to his were to look for Lizzie's room. He found her door and saw that behind the tightly shuttered window, light still shone. He bent down and picked up a couple of small stones from the ground.

Lizzie was just about to change for bed when she heard something hit her window. "_Plink!_" Another one. She went to the window and unbarred it, nearly getting pelted in the face with a small rock as she opened it.

"Sorry!" Fred called from below.

"Hey! How did you get down there?"

"I escaped. Come out to your balcony."

She unbolted the door that led out to it and stepped outside. Fred was just climbing up the side of the wall. Lizzie laughed as he jumped over the railing and came to stand beside her, looking over the edge. The night was warm and Lizzie pushed her long sleeves up to her elbows. They stood in silence, watching as courtiers lit lanterns, which reminded her of Japanese globes that she'd seen in books, and hung them from the branches of the apple trees.

"I'm sorry," said Fred.

"For what?" she asked, confused.

"For getting you into all this mess. Now it will be a week before we can get back to Marmoreal to try to get you home. If you'd rather not go with me, I'll understand."

"I promised I wouldn't leave yet, Fred, and I'm not. Besides, probably no one even misses me back home."

"I'm sure Mickey does."

Mickey! Had she even though of him once since all this happened? "For some reason, this world seems more real than that one," she said. "I can hardly remember what he looks like...that sounds cruel, doesn't it?"

Fred just shrugged and continued to watch the lanterns being hung below. There were over two dozen in the tree just below them now, lighting the terrace up as if it was mid-day.

Fred was about to hop up and sit on the railing when he stopped short. In the light from the lanterns, he could plainly see the purple bruises encircling Lizzie's wrists as she rested her hands on the railing. Scenarios of how she would have gotten bruises like that filled his mind – none of them good.

"What is that?" he asked sharply, his heart pounding.

Lizzie noticed what he was looking at and tried nonchalantly to clasp her hands behind her back and pull her sleeves down. Fred grabbed one arm from behind her back and pushed the sleeve back up. He turned her wrist over, inspecting it.

"_This_, Lizzie...who did this to you?" he demanded. In the lantern light, he could clearly see the marks that could only have been made by someone holding her tightly by her wrists, hurting her.

"It's nothing, Fred. Don't worry about it." She tried to pull her arm back, but he held her fast.

"Don't worry about it? Someone did this to you and you expect me to not _worry_ about it?" He focused on Lizzie and tried to calm himself...he needed an answer. "Lizzie, I need to know who did this."

Lizzie sighed and dropped her eyes, unwilling to meet his. "You were having a nightmare. I tried to wake you up, but you thought I was someone else," she said quietly and looked up at him. "You were asleep, Fred, you didn't know what you were doing..."

Realization dawned on his face. He backed away from her, dropping her arm as if it were made of burning coals. She crossed the distance that he had put between them and put her arms around him.

"Fred, it's okay, really. It wasn't your fault!"

Fred just stared, unseeing, lost in self recrimination. _He_ had done this. He had hurt _Lizzie_. He remembered _feeling_ her fear after he had woken up, not realizing what had happened. Each thought was like a separate dagger slicing at his heart. Lizzie – who he had _sworn_ that he would never hurt! How could she possibly be standing here, holding him, telling him it was okay?

Lizzie, desperate for some response other than this trance he seemed to be lost in, took his face in her hands. "Fred, look at me..." she pleaded.

Her touch brought his attention back to her. Gently he took her hands from his face and held them in his own.

"You should have told me. I could have hurt you...worse than I did."

"You didn't."

Fred was not to be sidetracked. "I could have _killed _you."

"No, you wouldn't have."

"You can't know that," he said.

"Yes, I do. You couldn't have killed me, because I wasn't _real _in Elphyne."

"You were real enough to _me_." He took one of her wrists in his hands, smoothing it with his thumbs. Impulsively, he raised it to his lips and kissed the underside tenderly. Suddenly he was barraged by a feeling coming from Lizzie that made his heart race strangely. He realized that he needed to change the subject..._Now_. He dropped her arm and turned back to the railing.

"So, what do you think would happen if one of those things caught fire?"

"I don't know," she said, slightly breathless. "I suppose it would probably burn the whole castle down."

"Hmm...nice thought to sleep on. I'll see ya' in the morning!" He hopped over the rail and let himself down to the ground, turning around to smile at her as he walked away.

"night, Fred..." Lizzie whispered.

She watched him until he turned the corner and was out of sight then went back inside, and tried valiantly to concentrate on getting changed for bed and nothing else. She threw the night gown over her head, blew out her lamp and hopped into bed, pulling the covers up around her, wishing herself to sleep – tomorrow morning would be here before she knew it and she was _not _an early riser. The harder she tried to sleep, the more Fred kept popping up in her mind, begging to be thought about. Her wrist still tingled slightly with the memory of his kiss.  
Oooo! Fred! Exasperatingly, confusing Fred! She decided he either must not have realized what he was doing (and wouldn't that account for his actions afterwards?), or he was playing some game designed to piss her off or make her uncomfortable. Either of those scenarios she could deal with. She most definitely was _not _going to think of how his eyes looked - the deepest blue she'd ever seen, or how tenderly he had touched her, or how his kiss had sent a shiver through her – nope! She wasn't going to think about that at all.

* * *

Fred knew Lizzie would be watching him, so he walked at a painfully normal pace until he was out of her sight. Then he raced up the side of the castle to his own terrace as fast as he could without falling. He opened his door, barring it behind him and let himself sink to the floor, his back propped against it. What was he _doing_? He smacked the back of his head against the door a few times for good measure, hoping perhaps he could knock some sense into himself. Lizzie was going to think he had absolutely cracked. Maybe he had.  
The memory of the feelings that he had sensed from her, the shiver that ran through her as he had kissed her, almost intoxicated him. He just...he had been so worried about her, so grateful for her forgiveness... He had crossed a line and he knew it (and if the snippets he'd managed to catch about his past were true, he'd never touched anyone that way his whole life). He only hoped Lizzie thought he'd been teasing her. It was just a game – a dangerous game that he should _not _be playing. He undressed and climbed into bed, wondering if his forgotten demons would wake him before dawn. That was another thing he'd need to address. If Lizzie was going to be anywhere in the vicinity of him sleeping, he'd need a way to protect her. There was only one thing he could do, he decided, as he felt sleep closing in on him. That night, he slept soundly.

* * *

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	11. The Ties That Bind

"_Think of me -  
think of me fondly, when we've said goodbye.  
Remember me once in a while -  
please promise me you'll try._

_...Recall those days, look back on all those times,  
think of the things we'll never do.  
There will never be a day,_  
_when I won't think of you . . ."_

_-_Phantom of the Opera

* * *

Tarrant only knocked once on principal before he tried the door. Unlocked – good. He never could get Freddie out of bed when he was younger, either. Tarrant cracked the door open enough to make sure he _was_ in bed before entering and lighting the lamp. He gave Fred a rough shake.

"Hey! Wake up!" A muffled groan came from under the covers. Tarrant threw the covers back and hit Fred's shoulder.

"Ow!" shouted Fred. "Knock it off! I'm awake!"

"Here," Tarrant threw some clothes at him. "Get dressed, Mirana's waiting for you."

Fred sat up. How late had he slept? He didn't see daylight through the window, surely it wasn't that late, yet! "Waiting for me? Why'd you let me sleep so long?" he asked, throwing the clothes on.

"Don't worry, you're not late. Mirana's just always early."

Fred tripped on something as he came around the side of the bed. The chest from the basement was sitting on the floor. Had that been here last night?

"I packed your clothes, but you'll need the cloak unless ya' like sleeping on dirt or getting rained on." He tossed a dark green wool cloak at him as Fred finished tying his boots. "Come on, we need to go."

"Go ahead, I'll be right behind you."

"Alright...don't go back t' sleep."

Fred waited until he was gone and threw the cloak around his shoulders, fastening it at the top. He opened up the chest and looked through the books until he found one whose pages were blank. He put that behind him in the waistband of his pants and three things that looked like graphite pencils he threw into the large hood hanging down from the back of the cloak. That would have to do until he could find a good time to conceal them in his other belongings. He didn't feel like answering questions about them this morning. He turned to his window. Hanging on either side were curtains, drawn back with thick cords. Fred untied one and pulled the cord out. It was about five feet long. He wound it around itself and threw that back in his hood, too. Satisfied, he left to follow Tarrant.

* * *

Lizzie gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed, lighting the lamp. It felt as though she had tossed and turned all night, falling asleep only to be woken by a strange feeling of having forgotten or misplaced something important. Remembering what Mirana had said about a dress, she opened the wardrobe to find a long, dark, bluish-green dress and a heavy, navy blue, wool cloak. She undressed and pulled the dress over herself, tying the laces at the back and the ones it had going down the backs of each sleeve as well. The fabric was a sturdy, yet soft linen, and it's wide skirt came nearly to the ground. Lizzie marveled at how such a beautiful dress could be practical at the same time. She had just finished getting ready when she heard a knock at the door.

"Good morning, Raenie," she said to the messenger girl who stood at the door.

"Good morning, Miss Lizzie!" said Raenie. "Mirana asked that I escort you to her when you're ready."

"I'm ready, let's go. Oh!" She turned back to take the cloak out of the wardrobe. She threw it around her shoulders and fastened it as she followed the girl out of the castle.

Before she saw Fred, she decided that it would be best to just forget what he'd done the night before. In the light of morning, it was easy to see how she'd overreacted to his actions. No doubt he was just teasing her.

He turned around as they approached and flashed her a bright smile, and Lizzie found herself wishing absurdly that they hadn't cut his hair. He looked so different now, so far removed from the Drop Dead Fred she remembered, that she found it was getting harder and harder to think of him in that respect. In her mind, the crazy, eccentric, imaginary friend of yesterday was slowly being replaced with this (_very... nice looking_) man with striking blue eyes and a somewhat shy but thoughtful demeanor. She wasn't sure she cared for that – maybe he _should_ put a bag over his head. She smiled back at him.

He was standing next to Mirana, who seemed to be talking with a horse...a huge horse, easily the height of a Clydesdale, though perhaps a bit narrower in body. He was covered in black leather armor with gold accents. Behind a long saddle was a bag on either side. On the front segment, it's scabbard lashed to the armor, was the claymore from the basement.

Fred moved over to stand by Lizzie. "You look like a _girl_, Snot-face," he whispered to her in a fair approximation of the old Fred.

Despite herself, Lizzie grinned. "I though I told you to quit calling me that.._Freddie._"

"Ouch!" he said with a smirk. "Sorry, old habits die hard." He smiled to himself. If Lizzie knew he'd been planning on calling her that since he went to bed last night, just in case there were any tensions between them this morning, she'd definitely have his head checked.

Mirana motioned for them to join her. "This is Torineil, chief of Marmoreal's cavalry," she said. "He has graciously offered to carry you through to Northern Witzend and back. He knows the back roads of Underland better than...almost everyone," she glanced at Fred.

Fred and Lizzie thanked him for his kindness. The horse answered them in a deep voice, "It is an honor, Frederick Hightopp. It was you who taught my Father these paths which I in turn learned from him."

It took Fred a moment to realize that the horse was referring to himself, his full name sounding foreign in his ears. He mused at how strange a thing time was to him. Here, he had been gone a little over fifteen years, while only ten had passed in Elphyne (and of all of them, he'd spent less than one as a mortal). All the decades spent outside the flow of time in Lizzie's world, taking charge after charge had left him with a body younger than his years, but with a soul that sometimes felt as though it were some ancient stone or pebble, kicked around from place to place - seeing so much, but living so little.

He looked up at the sky, for some reason expecting to see storm clouds, but seeing only the clear bluish-pink sky. Why'd he feel so nervous all of a sudden?

"We should go," he said to anyone who cared to listen.

"Yes," said Mirana, with a smile, "off with you now."

Fred nodded, took the reigns, and with his foot in the stirrup, hoisted himself onto the back of the horse. He held his arm out to help Lizzie. She took his arm and he pulled her up behind him. "Betcha never though those lessons would actually come in handy, did ya'?" Lizzie's mom had paid an inordinate amount of money when she was six for her to have riding lessons. Fred had agreed with her father that it was a ridiculous idea.

"The only thing I remember from them is that you made the instructor keep falling off."

Fred laughed. "Well, you'd better hold on, or _you're _gonna fall off."

She put her arms tightly around his waist and they left, off into the great unknown. Less than an hour later, the skies over Marmoreal turned blackish purple as a violent storm rolled in over the plains from the south.

* * *

The moment they exited Marmoreal's gates, Fred felt lighter. He'd had enough of the stuffy castle and more than enough of everyone he didn't know acting as if he should. He took a deep breath of fresh air. He'd always loved being outdoors. He'd loved it when his charges had gone camping, even though he was usually too busy planning pranks to notice much of his surroundings. Something about it called to him, and the sound of the wind blowing through the trees seemed to take away the remnants of the things he couldn't remember, leaving him at peace. He smiled, feeling Lizzie's arms around him. If only he could stay like this forever he thought, he would be happy.

They felt the first raindrop just after they had stopped for lunch. They were already on the outskirts of the Tulgey Wood and decided that unless it got really bad, they would be best off to just keep going. They managed to keep ahead of the brewing storm for a few more hours, but as late afternoon approached, the boiling purple clouds from the south began to overtake them and the mist became a steady downpour that only threatened to get harder. Torineil suggested they make camp in the Tulgey Wood proper as he knew of a tree they would be able to shelter in.

"Shelter _in_?" asked Lizzie over Fred's shoulder. He merely shrugged in response.

As they journeyed deeper and deeper into that part of the forest, the trees became larger and larger until Lizzie began to believe they might just be sheltering _in_ a tree for the night. Then, she saw it...The Tree. It was easily 30 ft in diameter, though not nearly as tall as the giant redwoods she had seen in her own world. It couldn't be much over 150 ft tall. As they got closer, she saw that most of it's top had been broken off and it was merely the shell of what it used to be. Torineil stopped beside it and they climbed down.

There was a crack extending from the base of the tree upwards about 7 feet, roughly 3 ft wide at the bottom, tapering off to nothing near the top. Fred took the torch from their supplies and lit it with a few drops of something Mirana had made up for them. He walked back to the tree and ducked in through the crack, holding the now blazing torch before him. Lizzie was following close behind him.

"Boo!" He jumped back, Lizzie screamed, and he laughed. "Gotcha!"

"Knock it off, Fred!"

"Sorry," he said, still laughing.

He continued inside, sweeping the light around. This was obviously a well known stopping place for travelers – the cold remains of a fire marked the center of the tree. Though the tree was broken, most of the trunk remained as a ceiling about 10 feet above them save a small area directly over where the fire had been built that formed a natural chimney. Lizzie felt like she'd entered the tree of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan.

She threw the half-burnt pieces of wood from the old fire together and went out in search of dry kindling. Luckily the ground underneath the largest branches remained fairly dry in-spite of the torrents of rain now falling. She picked up what she could find and delivered it to Fred who was poking at the small fire he'd already started and slipped back outside. She sat down, leaning against the tree, listening to the rain as it drummed on the leaves. Her eyes were closed and she didn't even notice that Fred had sat down next to her until he spoke.

"Whatcha' thinkin' about?"

She sighed. "I'm thinking that when I get back home, I should move away."

Fred was surprised. During her last week as his charge, he'd suggested that moving (far) away from her mom might be a good idea, but she'd given him some piss-poor excuse as to why she needed to stick around. "I think that's a great idea! What brought about that change of mind?"

She didn't answer, but rested her head against his shoulder. He brought his arm up around her, and they sat together, listening to the rain until Fred decided she must have though his question was rhetorical. Finally she spoke, her voice tight with tears.

"We forget so much when we grow up, Fred," she said sadly, "so many things...and there never seems to be any time left to think about the things that used to make us happy. Like just sitting here with you, listening to the rain. You know, when I was about nine or ten, I used to sneak out when it was raining. I'd run to the park and sit under the picnic table. I felt so _safe _– my mother couldn't find me and no one was going to come and tell me to go home. ...Then I'd wonder if you were somewhere out in the storm, and if you'd forgotten me."

Fred's heart broke for the little girl who thought he'd just left and forgotten all about her. He felt his own eyes sting with tears as he pulled her into a hug. "I'm so sorry, Lizzie. I'm so sorry...I should have been there for you."

"It wasn't your fault, Fred," she said, "but please...promise me one thing...promise me when I leave, you won't forget me."

He buried his face in her hair. "With all my heart, Lizzie, I promise...I could never forget you." He closed his eyes, trying to commit the feel of her embrace to memory.

She pulled back then and wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, I know I'm just being a silly _girl,_" she laughed, half-heartedly.

Fred shook his head. "No you're not. I can't imagine how hard it was to live by yourself all those years with the mega-beast." He wiped a tear from her cheek. "I'm proud of you."

"That means a lot, coming from you," she said sincerely.

She stood up to go back inside but stopped, and knelt down, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thank you for listening," she said, and disappeared into the tree.

* * *

The fire was burning cheerily, lighting and warming the inside of the tree and giving it almost a cozy feel – at least compared to the dampness and chill outside. Lizzie searched their supplies for one of the ration bars that had been packed for them. She didn't know what was in them, but they seemed to keep you full for four or five hours. She tossed one to Fred when he came back in.

"I don't know what's in these," she said, taking a bite, "but they're pretty good."

"If it's something Mirana made up, I should probably be glad I don't remember the recipe."

Full night had fallen on the forest now and Lizzie found she could hardly keep her eyes open. Yawning, she fastened her cloak around her shoulders and looked for a level place to sleep.

"Are you going to bed?" asked Fred.

"I was going to. Why?"

He was quiet for a moment, causing Lizzie to look over at him. Why'd he look so nervous?

"What?" she asked, suspiciously.

"I'm going to need your help with something first..." He picked up his cloak from where he'd discarded it earlier and put it on then went over to their packs, rummaging around. He pulled out something, but that hand was hidden in the folds of his cloak so she couldn't see what it was. "Is that where you're sleeping?"

"Yes..."

"Okay, I'll sleep over here then." He moved to a spot about 10 feet away. "You're sure it's level enough there?"

Why wasn't he looking at her? She was too tired for whatever game he was playing. She wish he'd just say whatever he was going to say and quit stalling.

"Fred, quit acting weird, and just tell me whatever it is you need help with."

"Right... Come here." He ran his empty hand nervously through his hair as she came over and stood in front of him. She was about to ask what he needed again when he handed something to her.

"Here, take this." In her hands was a thick red cord, twisted like a rope.

"Fred...what is this?"

"Protection from me."

It took her a few seconds to understand. Crap. Crap! "Fred, I'm _not_ tying you up!"

"Fine!" he shouted angrily. "I'll just sleep out _there_!" He pointed outside where it was still raining.

"You're not sleeping outside!"

He took a step closer to her, a determined look on his face, and held out his arms in front of her, fists together. "Then..do..it!"

She tried a different tack. "How are you going to sleep with your hands tied together?"

"I'll manage," he said unwaveringly.

She gave him a long look and his expression softened. "Lizzie, I'm not going to be able to sleep if I think you're not safe. Please..."

She sighed. "Fine. I don't think it's a good idea, though."

Taking the cord, she wrapped it around his wrists, passing it back under and around in a figure eight several times. While she worked, she stepped closer to him, her head bent over his hands. She had no idea she was so close to him until he spoke, his breath tickling her ear.

"Tighter, Lizzie," he whispered.

Suddenly, she was acutely aware of his proximity and what she was doing. She took the ends of the cord and pulled them tight, knotting them deftly, and stepped back.

"Thanks. Hey, can you put my hood up?" He didn't really fancy sleeping with his head on the dirt.

She reached around his shoulders and pulled his hood over his head. Fred lay down and tried to get comfortable. "Now if something big, mean, and ugly comes to eat us, you're in charge," he said.

"I don't think that's very funny...what if something _does_ come to eat us?"

"There's a sword on the horse. Just whack it a few times...I'm sure we'll be fine."

She looked at him, doubtful. "Do you need some help?" Fred kept trying to wrap his cloak around himself, but wasn't having much luck with his hands tied together.

"Yes, please."

She pulled it around him and tucked it around his shoulders, like she would a child. "I bet you never thought _you'd_ be tucking _me _in," he said.

"Shall I kiss you on your forehead like you always do when you thinkI'msleeping?" she asked, grinning. Fred turned beet red and she laughed.

"Good-night, Fred."

She went back to her spot and lay down. It was a long time before either of them slept, though- each haunted by their separate anxieties. For Fred, this was not only a day closer to remembering all the things that he'd been running from for so long, but also one day closer to losing Lizzie. When had it changed that his goal was no longer to get her home as fast as possible, but to see how close he could dare himself to stand to her and to discover just how many thoughts he could pick out of her brain if he concentrated? He was painfully aware that it was just going to make it that much harder to watch her go, but there was a larger part of him that just didn't care. There was something about the give and take of emotions between them that made him feel more alive than he could ever remember. For all he knew, he'd be as loony as Tarrant in a few days, anyway. When he finally fell asleep, his dreams came back with a vengeance, as if in retaliation for the sound sleep the night before.

Lizzie lay watching the fire until her eyes stung from the brightness and heat. She thought back to the conversation she'd had with Fred earlier that day and the question she'd never answered. What had changed her mind about moving away from home? How was she to answer her best friend when she was so unsure of the answer herself? All she knew was that when she though of a place that could make her happy, it didn't include Canada, or Antarctica, or Venus, or any of the other options Fred had offered up to her when he'd tried to convince her to leave home on previous occasions. She was dreadfully afraid that a large part of her heart would be left here, in Underland...with him. And his...his _flirting_ wasn't helping things either. She grinned, remembering his blush when she'd called him out on kissing her while she was asleep. She'd been taking a huge gamble...she'd had no idea he'd actually done that.

She was finally floating off to sleep when a sound caught her attention. She didn't spare a moment to listen again, but jumped up and ran over to Fred who was in the midst of a nightmare once again. She tried to wake him, but he didn't respond, so she tried her best to comfort him until the nightmare was over and he slept peacefully once again. Exhausted, Lizzie crept back over to her own space and fell asleep.


	12. Open Doors

"_Memories we share together,  
moments no one else can know,  
I will keep them close to me  
and never let them go..._

_You have lost yourself in dreaming,  
I have lost myself in you.  
Now we lie beneath the sky  
of stars and midnight blue."_

_-Enya_

* * *

Someone was shaking her.

"Hey, wakey – wakey!" called a cheery voice.

"Fred, go back to sleep...," Lizzie groaned. How could he be so chipper when she knew for a fact he'd only gotten a few hours of quality sleep. She pulled her hood down over her face.

He pulled it back off. "Come on, at least untie me."

She sat up and unknotted the cord around his wrists. They were red where the cord had dug into them. She sighed unhappily.

"Yeah.." he said, "apparently I didn't sleep well. Anyway, I don't want to talk about that. Come on, let's go."

"I thought you weren't in a big hurry to get there."

"I'm not, but sitting around is boring." He was was also lonely and tired of watching her sleep.

"Alright, I'm up..." Lizzie struggled into a standing position.

* * *

They had left the Tulgey Woods and were now crossing through a dry, deserted region. As the wind blew across the plains, it brought with it dust so thick that it blotted out the sun, turning the clear, cloudless day into an unearthly twilight of golden haze. They tightened their cloaks around themselves in an effort to shut out the worst of it. Fred asked Torineil if they should stop so that they could find something to shelter him with as well, but the horse cautioned them to stay astride. The winds here were fickle and could come or go at any time.

"Many a traveler has been lost forever by sheltering in these parts," he said. "The false light plays tricks on the mind."

Gradually the storm abated and they were left in a land filled with desolation. As far as the eye could see, there was hard packed earth broken only by a lonely, twisted tree or a bit of scrub grass.

"What is this place?" asked Fred.

"These _used_ to be the fertile plains of Iplam," replied Torineil. "What you see now is all that is left after the savagery of the Red Queen. Twenty years ago, these lands were lush and green, the crops grown here the pride of all Underland."

Fred looked across the barren land, confused. "But not even a whole army could destroy something like _this_..."

"It was not the army who did this, but the Jabberwock under the command of the queen. This land is cursed, the clans who lived here dead. There are parts no man can journey to where the families still lay where they were slaughtered."

Lizzie winced at his words. She lay her forehead against Fred's back and tightened her arms around him, hugging him for a moment as she felt tears in her eyes. She couldn't imagine how he must feel, to be approaching his moment of truth, knowing all the pain that he would remember. The more she thought about it, the more she worried about him, about his sanity and his future here in this world. Where would he go? Even Tarrant, who would understand his pain, had had 15 years to overcome it. She tried to think back to any disasters that had happened that long ago in her world - nothing distinct came to mind. What would seem like history to many would seem like it had happened yesterday to him. Who would there be here - when her protector needing protecting?

* * *

It wasn't Torineil's words, but the feel of Lizzie's arms tighten around him and her head nestling against his back that made Fred's heart ache. He closed his eyes and concentrated on her emotions, trying to sense what she was feeling. Like looking into a mirror, all he found were thoughts of himself. She was worrying about him again, trying to find a way to save him from the heartache she knew awaited.

He should tell her to stop. He should have made her stay in Marmoreal, but he knew if she had, he would have never made it this far. There were things he could face without Lizzie, but himself wasn't one of them.

His attention was diverted by an object sitting in the middle of the empty plain, still far off, but close enough for him to make out the shape.

"Where does that door lead?" he asked Torineil.

The horse stopped. "What door?"

"Over there," he said gesturing in the distance.

The horse moved his mighty head in the direction Fred indicated. "I cannot see a door."

"Fred, I think you're the only one who can see it," said Lizzie.

With Fred's guidance, Torineil took them closer until he asked him to stop. He helped Lizzie down and then climbed down himself and walked to a spot in the middle of nowhere, put his hand out as if he was reaching for a knob, turned his hand, and pulled. A large open door suddenly sprang to life in front of them, sitting about six inches off the ground. It had nothing supporting it, just a door approximately 7 feet high. Through the door stretched not the deserted plains of Iplam, but the intersection of two roads in a forest.

"I know that path," said the horse. "But it is in the Southern part of the Tulgey Wood, far from our goal."

"Great!" said Fred, "A detour!"

"Fred," said Lizzie, ignoring him, "how many doors have you seen since we left?"

"I don't know, probably a dozen or so."

"And you didn't think to say anything?"

"I thought if it was important someone else would," he said, defensively, "I didn't know I was the only one who could see them."

"Torineil," she asked, "would it be possible to find a door closer to the cavern?" Fred elbowed her in a effort to shut her up.

"It's very possible," replied the horse. "There are legends of them around Witzend."

"Fred, let Torineil know when you see another door, and we'll check it out."

"Lizzie," he whispered, fiercely, "I _really _don't want to get there faster than we already are!"

"If we save a day, we don't have to be in such a _hurry _to get there..," she whispered back.

Oh.. "Oh! Good idea..."

* * *

It took them three hours and four doors before they found one in the right direction. As it turned out it saved them more than a day, the Crystal Cavern was less than half a day's journey from the foothills they now found themselves in. Stepping through the doorway had reminded Lizzie of some strange game of 'Snakes and Ladders', passing all the miles left ahead in a matter of seconds. Torineil led them to the place where they would have made camp on the third night. In the face of the rocky hillside was a cave, not very deep, but large enough to offer protection from the elements. The rocky ground sloped gently away from it's entrance.

After unloading their supplies, they set about finding enough wood for a fire. What had been an easy task in the Tulgey Wood now took them twice as long. The trees here reminded Lizzie of pines with their long prickly needles and high branches. As in a pine forest, the needles covered the ground, choking out smaller trees making finding adequate kindling difficult. They finally settled on chopping a small tree into usable logs with the small hand ax from their pack. When they'd hauled what they could back to camp, Lizzie asked Torineil if there was anywhere close by to wash up. The dust of Iplam still coated her clothing and she felt like it was ingrained in every pore.

"There is a stream if you follow the path through the trees to the next valley. It is a short distance."

Lizzie looked at Fred.

"Go ahead," he said, nodding towards the trail. "I'll start the fire."

She took the pack with the other dress that had been packed for her and rummaged around until she found a square of something that smelled like soap. The stream was bigger than she imagined. It wasn't very deep, but wide and fast moving. The water crashed over the rocks, throwing up spray and foam, the sound drowning out everything around her. She walked downstream along the bank until it turned and found a deep pool with a wide sandbar where the current was not so turbulent. She stripped off her dirty clothes and washed as quickly as possible. It was more than just a little eerie to be bathing in a creek out in the middle of nowhere. She ducked under the water, wetting her hair and trying her best to tackle that with the soap as well. When she felt that perhaps she'd finally gotten as clean as she was going to get, she threw the new dress on from her pack (a green one with gold trim). The sun was still high in the sky and the day fairly warm so when she finished dressing, she washed the one that she'd been wearing. The sun should dry it before nightfall. She shook the dust out of her cloak as much as possible – it felt like wool and she didn't think you were supposed to wash that.

She had no intentions of sneaking up on Fred, but she saw him before he saw her. He was sitting by the fire with his back against a rock, scribbling something in one of the books she recognized from his trunk at Marmoreal. She didn't realize he'd brought one, but Fred was nothing if not surprising. Captivated, she moved behind a tree as he stopped and looked up, his eyes far away in thought for a moment until he looked down and began writing once again. Here, alone, with no one to see her, Lizzie allowed herself to watch him. There was a quiet grace about him now, a calmness, she thought. Almost as though his persona of Drop Dead Fred had been balanced by this other part of himself, left here in this world so many years ago. He closed the book, putting it in his pack, and leaned his head against the rock with his eyes closed. Lizzie smiled, he looked so _normal_ now...and for the first time it struck her that here, in the land of his birth, he _was - _though his life so far had been anything but. He was a man who had seen unspeakable horrors and found himself in the position of starting over in a world where he knew nothing and no one, not even himself, and had survived. It made her want to go and throw her arms around him... She noticed that the sun was getting lower in the sky, and used the opportunity of him not paying attention to walk back into their camp.

"I thought you were going to hurry," he said without opening his eyes.

"Sorry, I got sidetracked."

He stood up and picked up his pack, slinging it over his shoulder. Lizzie held the soap out to him as he passed and made his way down the path from which she'd come. She lay her newly washed dress over a sunny rock and sat down by the fire. She wondered what Fred had been writing in the journal...the inner-workings of his mind never failed to intrigue her, and there were very few windows into his soul. She supposed she was lucky he had taken the temptation of reading it away by putting it into his pack. Still...

* * *

"Oh for crying out loud..." Fred took everything out of the pack one more time to check, but there was still no shirt. He must have thrown it into Lizzie's when he was looking for something. He debated just going back without one, but in the end put the dirty one on. At least his other clothes were clean. Maybe he could get past Lizzie without her noticing he thought as he made his way back to camp.

"It's customary to put on _clean_ clothes after you bathe," she snickered as he walked past her.

"Ha, ha, ha...," he said, sarcastically. "My shirt must be in your pack."

"Don't go rifling through all _my_ stuff." Lizzie got up and went over to check in her bag, pulling out his clean shirt. "Here...," she said tossing it at him.

"Thanks." His back was to her as he took off the dirty one and tossed it aside.

He felt her alarm more than he heard her sharp intake of breath. He turned around. "What's wrong?"

She just stood staring at him for a moment, and he felt her trying very hard to hide the slew of emotions running through her – dread, dismay, anger, protectiveness. Something was _very_ wrong with him. She was going to lie to him, he knew it - she was going to tell him it was nothing.

"Nothing, you just...have some scratches."

"Don't lie to me, Lizzie. What's wrong?"

She looked up at him, meeting his blue eyes. "They're... pretty bad, but they're healed...long healed."

"Stibbler said I was injured when I came through the door. Maybe it happened then." He threw the clean shirt over his head.

"Maybe so." Thick lines of scar tissue criss-crossed his back. She felt sick at the thought of even counting how many. They weren't scratches. He'd been _beaten_.

From her still simmering emotions, Fred suspected they were more than just scratches. Whatever it was had upset Lizzie deeply – tears filled her eyes. "Lizzie..."

"Oh Fred," she cried, "I'm so sorry...for all that's happened to you. It's just not fair..." She threw her arms around him, the tears streaming down her face.

He held her tightly, holding back his own tears - not for himself, but for Lizzie. How she made him feel like he could face the world and everything in it, how she cared for him, and how he _loved _her. What would he do when she left? Someone else in her world would hold her, and make her laugh, and wipe away her tears, but for him... there would be no one - because for him, there would only be Lizzie. He kissed the top of her head before he stepped back.

"Lizzie, I don't want you to worry about me. I'll be fine." He needed her to stop, he couldn't bear the thought of being the source of her pain. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, he tried to think of a way to change the subject. "Hey! I know something that'll make you feel better..."

He left her and rummaged around in their supplies, taking out a small tin and one of their metal cups. He poured water into the cup and then grabbed one of the smaller logs from the fire whose end was still unburnt. Placing the flaming end under the cup, it only took a minute before the water began to steam and he mixed in the power from the tin. He kicked the log back into the fire and held the cup out to Lizzie.

"Try it! It's like hot chocolate...sort of...without the chocolate."

Lizzie laughed and took the cup, sitting down against the rocks with him beside her. "Fred, how come you always know how to make me feel better?"

"Because I'm Fred! It's my job. It's what I do." he boasted.

She looked over at him. "It's not your _job_ anymore."

He held her gaze for a moment. "It's still what I do..."

* * *

When the sky grew dark, they wrapped themselves in their cloaks (Fred making Lizzie tie his wrists once again amidst her complaints) and lay down outside the cave in front of the fire, their heads close so they could hear each other speak with their bodies stretched out in opposite directions. They watched as the stars came out, seeing who could come up with the craziest names for them and looking for alien spaceships, well Fred was anyway. Finally, they both became quieter until, after a few minutes of silence, Lizzie realized that Fred had fallen asleep. She wished he'd have pleasant dreams for once. She was about to turn over and go to sleep herself when his pack, sitting by the rocks not five feet from her, caught her attention. It would be _wrong._ It would be _more_ than wrong. Never mind that he would do _exactly _the same thing she was thinking of doing. Quietly, she sat up and crawled over to his pack. She looked back at him, sleeping peacefully. She opened it and removed the journal, moving back to her place by the fire, ready to hide it if he made the least little sound.

She opened it, but all the first pages were blank. This was the only journal in his pack, something had to be in here... She flipped through more pages until she came to a page near the back filled with Fred's neat hand-writing. She looked guiltily over at his still unmoving form before turning back to the journal. The firelight flickered over the page as she read the lines he had written.

"_I sit alone, tired, and cold -  
waiting for the memories that will  
take you away from me.__  
No right have I to ask you to stay -  
__to live, and love, and never leave.  
__Beyond the sunsets of tomorrow,  
__your life is waiting –  
__without the pain that mine must bring.  
__Our souls, though barely more than strangers,  
__are joined by an invisible chain-  
__my heart to yours.  
__I do not know if we will ever meet again,  
__life is short, our distance far.  
__When this world has passed away,  
__and time is no more,  
__I will be waiting for you then-  
__somewhere beyond the stars."_

Her hands shook as she closed the journal and placed it gently back in Fred's pack. What had she been expecting to find? She had no idea, perhaps a sketch or notes of some innocuous sort. Certainly not the heart-braking declaration she'd just read. She looked over at him. She had found the window to his soul and seen inside his heart, and she knew now as she watched him sleep that he hadn't been playing games with her after all. She thought back to all those times over the last week when she'd believed he'd just been teasing her or unaware of his actions and saw them now in a new light. And in that light of love, she was overwhelmed by what she found. She knew he would never tell her the things she had read – he would let her walk away and leave him without ever asking her to stay, without saying a word. He was without a doubt the most unselfish man she'd ever known. Her heart ached terribly at the thought of never seeing him again.

Suddenly, worry clouded his face, and his eyes moved rapidly behind their lids. His wrists strained against their bindings in an effort to escape his unseen dreams.

"Fred...," she knelt beside him, and ran her fingers through his hair. "Fred, wake up..." She knew he wouldn't wake, he never heard her after the nightmares began. She looked behind her and saw that the large rock they'd been leaning against earlier was only a few feet away. Pulling him under his arms, she dragged him close enough to the rock for her to lean against it. She raised his body so that his head rested in the crook of her arm and cradled him as he fought his personal demons. Gradually, his struggles lessened. She untied the cord binding his wrists and was about to lay him back down when he shifted, putting his arm around her waist in his sleep.

"Lizzie...," he murmured, "Lizzie..._please don't leave me_..." His voice was filled with sadness, every pretense stripped away in his unconscious plea - but in those four words, she read her future. She knew where she was meant to be. She had been born in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but she belonged _here,_ _now_, with _him._

Lizzie brushed his damp hair back from his forehead. "Don't worry, Fred," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

_A/N: In this story, I refer to the Jabberwock without a 'y' on the end. If you read the original poem, that what he's called. "Jabberwocky" is the name of the poem about the "Jabberwock". _

_Also, lots of the references to the places or descriptions of Horunvendush Day came from the actual screenplay of Alice in Wonderland, not the movie. There's a whole lot of cool stuff that didn't make it into the final product. _


	13. Of Rainbows and Revelations

"_... I'd give up forever to touch you,  
'cause I know that you feel me somehow.  
You're the closest to heaven that I've ever been,  
and I don't want to go home right now._

_...And I don't want the world to see me,  
'cause I don't think that they'd understand.  
When everything's made to be broken,  
I just want you to know who I am."_

-Goo Goo Dolls

* * *

Lizzie woke in the morning to find Fred still sleeping in her embrace, his head resting in her lap and one arm wound around her waist. She ran her fingers through his hair, then sighed and lifted him up enough for her to move out from under him and lowered him gently to the ground. She picked up her pack and left, walking down the path that lead to the stream.

Fred didn't wake until after she'd already gone. He lay semi-conscious, feeling the world slowly filter in around him. Something was different. The first thing was that he actually felt good, like he'd slept more than his usual two or three hours – his back wasn't even stiff from the rocks. The second thing he didn't notice until he sat up and ran his hand through his hair - his wrists were unbound. That little sneak! Apparently he'd been sleeping deep enough for her not to wake him. He hated it when he missed things, especially when it had something to do with him. It was also slightly unnerving to know she'd been watching him sleep (never mind that he'd done that to her more than once).

He saw her pack was gone and figured she must have gone down towards the water. As he stirred the fire, he wondered if he could come up with a good enough excuse why they shouldn't make any headway towards their goal today. It wasn't as if they were late, their short cut through the door meant that they were still ahead of where they should have been by now. He smirked - thinking of Torineil in terms of a rental car, they still had four days before they had to turn him in.

Even so, he decided to give Lizzie a hard time about untying him just for good measure. He saw her coming back up the trail, she must have washed her hair, it was wet as it fell over her shoulders. She was still wearing the same green dress she had on yesterday, and he mused that if she dressed like that in her world instead of the dreary frocks that her mother approved of, she'd have guys beating down her door. He spent a moment watching her, tucking another memory away for the future. He doubted he would ever manage to gather enough of them, but anything would be better than nothing after she'd left. Right now, on their journey, she was _his_ in a way. There was no one else to lay claim to her attention, no one else to make her smile...no one else to tie him up at night...no, no – wrong train of thought.  
She had almost reached him now, so he ducked behind a tree and waited. He grabbed her as she passed by, startling her as he pulled her back against him and held her fast with one arm around her waist and the other pining her arms to her sides.

"Someone untied me last night," he whispered in her ear. If she thought this was a game he was playing, she should know better than to think he'd play fair.

"Really?" she asked, a blush staining her cheeks. She tried to think of something witty to say, but her brain didn't seem to be working correctly, focused as it was on the feeling of Fred's arms tight around her.

"Really... Apparently I'm a deep sleeper."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps it was the mice. I saw one chewing at your pack."

Ignoring her reply, he released her and turned her to face him. "Lizzie, you can't _do_ that! Quit feeling sorry for me, I'm not going to fall apart just because..." He stopped as she pushed him up against the tree and stared him down.

"If it's for _my_ protection, then it's up to _me _when I want to be protected and when I think_ you_ need a good night's sleep..." She leaned towards him, her hands still on his chest where she held him against the tree, and whispered in his ear. "Understand?"

She gave him a meaningful look before she turned away and went over to their supplies to look for something to eat, leaving Fred to wonder what had just happened. Obviously he'd missed something... Following her, he decided he'd file Lizzie's behavior away for later when he had a proper chance to think (_daydream_) about it.

"Hey, I was thinking," he started. "Since we're so far ahead of schedule, we should have some fun today!"

She looked up at him suspiciously. "What kind of fun? If I recall, yours and my versions of _fun_ are sometimes quite different."

"Whatever," he said, unperturbed. "Let's go exploring. Come on, it'll be great!"

Lizzie fought the urge to laugh. He must have slept well she thought wryly, he sounded more like himself again. She'd missed him like this. It wasn't a good enough reason not to tease him a little though. He'd have to do better than that.

"I don't know..."

"Ple..," he stopped when he saw her try unsuccessfully to hide her grin. "You're just messing with me! Come on." He grabbed her hand and pulled her after him down the trail towards the stream.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

He lead her down to the water, but then turned upstream to walk along the bank, the opposite direction she had gone to bathe and wash up. They walked single file, Lizzie following behind Fred, wondering how he could have gotten this far off course in the short time he'd been down here the day before. Perhaps he was just wandering around hoping to find something. After about 10 minutes of walking, she began hearing a noise that she couldn't identify. It was quiet, almost like static on a radio turned down very low. As they continued on, it became louder and louder until she realized that the sound could only be that of an immense waterfall. Another five minutes and they reached his goal. Before them stood a face of rock, easily 100 feet tall. From the top the water ran over and down until it crashed into the rocks below. They stood for a moment, looking up. Fred turned to her to say something, but she couldn't hear him over the sound of the water. He shook his head, grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the rock face behind the waterfall. There was a shelf of rock about three feet wide running along the edge and disappearing behind it. Fred leaned closer so she could hear him.

"You'll have to get a little wet, but it's worth it," he shouted.

Lizzie nodded and watched as Fred ducked quickly under the water to the other side. She followed him through. Behind the waterfall, the ledge of rock stretched back to become the floor of a large cave surrounding a deep pool of crystal clear water. The sunlight coming through the waterfall threw dancing rainbows onto the walls and the pool shimmered with an unearthly glow as the light filtered in.

"Fred, how do you find these places?" Her words echoed loudly in the cavern. He seemed to have a knack for it she thought, remembering the canyon.

He flashed her a grin, "You just have to keep your eyes open."

She looked over the ledge of rock they were standing on. The water was only about six inches below them. It didn't look as deep as it had when they came in, about four feet maybe, with a smooth sandy bottom. Fred was squatting at the edge, looking over, balancing precariously on the balls of his feet. Later, Lizzie could never quite say what came over her to do such a thing...without thinking, she walked behind him and knocked him off his feet, sending him headfirst into the water below. He surfaced, sputtering.

"What did you do _that_ for?"

Lizzie couldn't help but to laugh. With all the pranks he'd pulled on everyone else, he never seemed to expect it when it happened to him. "I'm sorry," she managed to choke out.

"You're _gonna _be sorry..." He jumped out of the water and was back over the ledge before she even thought about running. She screamed and tried to make it out of the cave, but he caught her first and carried her over to the water where he unceremoniously dumped her in. He jumped in after her.

"Oh my gosh, it's_ cold _in here!" she screamed.

"That didn't seem to bother you when you knocked _me_ in," he said, laughing. She splashed water up in his face.

"You're asking for trouble..." He grabbed her shoulders and dunked her head under the water. "I warned you," he said when she came back up coughing. Lizzie didn't say a word, just pulled herself out to stand on the ledge.

"Chicken," mocked Fred, thinking she was giving up the fight.

Instead, she aimed straight at Fred and jumped, wrapping her arms around him as she landed and dragging him under the water with her. They emerged, tangled in each others arms, laughing.

"Who's a chicken?" asked Lizzie, still holding onto him.

"Not you, Lizzie, never you," he replied, trying valiantly to focus on anything but her lips that were so close to his.

Ever since she'd read his journal, Lizzie had felt a strange sense of wild abandon around him. She knew something about him he didn't know she knew. It made her feel like she was flying as she realized all the feelings she'd felt for Fred that she had tried to push aside or call something else were mirrored by him. She could feel the warmth of his body against hers in the cold water. She raised her hand and brushed the water from his face.

Fred had been trying ever since they left camp to get a read on Lizzie's strange behavior. It was as if their roles were reversed and she'd been doing everything she could to provoke him. He couldn't figure out what she was up to, but she was making it extremely hard to appear indifferent – hell, that was putting it mildly. Now here she was, her body warming his, their arms around each other, and the only thing he could decipher was that she was happy. He knew she would turn away and laugh, bringing their moment to an end, and he braced himself against the disappointment of letting her go. Instead, she reached up and brushed the water gently from his cheek. He closed his eyes, turning towards her hand as it caressed his face. She brought her other hand up, running her fingers through his wet hair and down the back of his neck. He could hear his blood rushing in his ears - how badly he wanted her to touch him, how much he wanted to touch her.

"Lizzie," he managed to whisper, "you shouldn't..." She leaned closer to him, and he felt their breath mingle together.

"I should," was the last thing he heard before her lips met his.

There was no gentleness between them, only the desire for each other. Lizzie moaned as Fred tangled his hands in her hair and deepened the kiss, his mouth firm and demanding against hers.  
All he'd ever wanted, all he'd ever needed, was here in his arms. With Lizzie he was real, he was whole and healed. Even without a past, she was his future - his life, his breath, his reason for waking in the morning, his angel of peace in the darkness. He found himself lost in their kiss, unable to tell where his own longing ended and hers began. Feeling his own body respond to hers, he moved his hand down and pulled her closer to him. Her hands moved up his chest beneath his shirt, leaving a trail of fire in their wake where she touched him. He moved them over to the ledge of rock, breaking their kiss long enough to pull himself out of the water and then Lizzie. They collapsed onto the rock, Lizzie above Fred, her hair falling around him, her hands pinning his wrists to the ground. Their eyes met, a smile of triumph on her face as she leaned over and kissed his neck.

"..lizabeth..." Fred rolled over, pulling her underneath him. "You don't know what you do to me," he whispered before he kissed her again.

A small, quiet voice inside his head told him to stop, now, before it was too late. Didn't she deserve to know who he was first? Didn't he? '_Stop!_' it begged as he continued to kiss her. '_Stop! Stop! Stop!'_ Until it was screaming inside his head.

"..op..." he murmured, finally releasing her mouth. "Stop," he tried again.

Lizzie finally heard him. "I don't want to stop," she said and recaptured his lips with her own.

Fred reluctantly broke the kiss again. "No, Lizzie - not here, not like _this_." He rolled off of her and knelt by her side. She sat up, and he ran his hand through her hair, his blue eyes intense. "You deserve to know who I am first.._.I _have to know who I am."

Her eyes met his as she considered his words. "I know who you are, Fred. That's enough for me."

He cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her again, this time softly and slowly with so much tenderness, Lizzie felt her eyes filling with tears. When he finally pulled back from her, she put her arms around him and they sat, clinging to each other.

"Now you know my secret," he said after a moment.

"I already knew," she answered smugly.

Fred leaned back to look at her. "What do you mean?" he asked, suspicious.

"Um...well, I sort of..." Her guilty smile told him all he needed to know.

"You read my journal, didn't you...you naughty girl?"

"I learned from the best..."

"I wondered what was wrong with you this morning. You could have just asked."

"And you would have let me read it?" she asked, disbelief evident in her voice.

Fred grinned. "Well I would have if I'd known you were so crazy about me." She punched his arm while he laughed at her. He stood and held his hands out to help her up. "Come on, I'm freezing."

They returned to camp hand in hand.

* * *

"Just change in there." Fred motioned to the cave. Lizzie looked doubtfully at him. "I promise I won't look...unless you need some help," he added. He grinned at her blush as she grabbed her pack and ducked into the cave. Fred grabbed his own clothes and changed as fast as he could, sitting his boots in the sun to dry, and sat down against the rocks. It was only mid-day. Now that he had a chance to sit, his mind raced through all that had happened, and he found himself in something very close to a state of shock. Lizzie...Lizzie... The scent and taste and feel of Lizzie still permeated his senses. She came out in dry clothes and sat down beside him.

She nudged him gently with her shoulder. "What'cha doin'?"

"Recovering."

She laughed. "Sorry about that."

Fred turned to her, an amused expression on his face, "You'd better not be."

"No, not really." She rested her head on his chest as he put his arms around her. So this was what it felt like when everything was perfect, she mused. She thought back to when her mother had set her up with Charles, how naive she had been to think that she'd ever loved him (or that he'd loved her for that matter). Whatever she had felt for him was like a stone skipping over a lake compared with the depth of love she felt for Fred. Love that had been there from her childhood until now - growing, changing, evolving.

"I love you, Fred."

He kissed the top of her head. "I love you, too, Lizzie."

In a tree beside the cave, a raven clicked his beak and ruffled his feathers before taking flight, disappearing into the western horizon.

* * *

They dismounted outside the mouth of the cavern. Fred looked up at the opening as if facing down an invisible foe. Lizzie took his hand as he took a deep breath and they entered the cave. Apparently, there was a reason that it was called Crystal Cavern. The walls glittered as though were made of millions of diamonds as the light from their torch shone over them.

"Where are we supposed to go?" asked Lizzie.

Fred shrugged. "Beats me. Maybe it's one of those 'you'll know it when you come to it' places."

They knew it when they came to it. The cavern itself wasn't very deep, but at the end of it, in the last chamber, was a wall that seemed to be made of silver glass with narrow veins of black rock running through it.. It stretched as far up as they could see from the torchlight and across the entire distance of that side of the room. Their reflections looked out at them from the natural mirror.

"I think this is it," said Fred. In his hand, he held the vial that he'd taken from his pack.

"Fred, wait." Lizzie took his face in her hands. "No matter what happens, I'm not leaving you...ever."

Fred put his arms around her and pulled her close. "As long as I live - as long as you'll have me, Lizzie, I'm yours."

The last kiss they shared before he remembered would haunt Lizzie for the rest of her life.


	14. Freddie's Story

_A/N: Warning: Implied rape but nothing graphic. _

_These are a portion of Fred's memories after drinking Mirana's potion. A lot of the background for this story comes from the screenplay of "Alice in Wonderland". It goes into much more detail about Horunvendush Day and it's a bit different than the actual movie. The Jabberwock was challenging the white knight, and triumphed then turned on the crowd. Iracebeth also comes across as much more evil and cruel in the screenplay. _

_Iracebeth's head is normal sized in this chapter._

* * *

"_I'm bleeding, I'm fading  
here in my final hour  
when long-lost memories return,  
and a voice keeps calling;  
'All dead and gone'._

_It's out of hand, life is in motion.  
Time to wake up, face the truth.._

_No one lives forever,  
all that really matters -  
Blessed realm, this world is sacred.  
I'm coming home.."_

-'Sacred 2' theme, Blind Guardian

* * *

His name was Frederick Hightopp, but everyone called him 'Freddie'. He was the middle child of Laren and Ellen Hightopp. He had and older brother, Tarrant, and a younger sister, Elsa, three years his junior, who had passed away when she was only four. Freddie and Elsa had been especially close, and her loss had hurt him deeply, changing him from the extroverted, engaging child of his younger years to a quieter, more reserved version of himself. He was born in the highlands of Witzend, but his family had moved to Marmoreal when he was six as his father had received a commission as Royal Hatter to the King. Freddie had never quite adapted to life in the castle – part of his soul, even as a child, seemed to have been left behind in the woods and fields of his homeland.

Despite the comings and goings of the busy castle, there were only a small handful of children who resided there. The closest ones to him and his brother were the King's own daughters, Mirana, who was the same age as Freddie, and Iracebeth, whom everyone called 'Racie'. Racie was two years older than himself, one year younger than Tarrant. Together, they roamed the hillsides and valleys surrounding Marmoreal without a care when they were young – Freddie frequently venturing further than allowed (and often getting left behind because of it, none of which he minded).

The older he got, the more bitter with life inside Marmoreal he became. He was scarcely older than ten when the King and Queen took an interest in his strange ability to perceive other's thoughts and his uncanny gift of foresight. Many were the times he would be called to stand with the king while he talked with visiting dignitaries. The king meanwhile developed a reputation of knowing exactly what others were thinking and his wisdom was renowned throughout all of Underland. Only those closest to the royal family knew that the secret was Freddie. He was expected to let them know of storms, natural disasters, approaching armies, whether they should plant here or there, and this and that until he fully resented his talents and felt more as if he were one of the king's service animals, longing for his freedom, than a boy.

He discovered his first door when he was nine. It wasn't far from Marmoreal, though further than anyone knew he had explored at his young age. The simple brass knob had caught his eye as he'd passed by. It was in the trunk of a tree, the outlines of the door itself camouflaged by the bark. He remembered staring at it for what seemed like ages, worried that if he opened it some monster would pounce from within and eat him. Finally he mustered up enough courage to place his hand on the knob. He turned it and opened it just enough to peek through the crack. Through it he saw, to his dismay, a place he recognized. The door had opened into the valley just down from Hightopp Hill where he and the other children played during the special gatherings of the clans there. He stepped through to find himself transported through very space itself- Hightopp Hill was a day's journey from Marmoreal. Turning around, he found an identical door behind him. He opened it back up and saw the place near Marmoreal that he had just come from. So began the first day that was to shape the rest of his life.

He begged an extra journal from the tutor at the castle and spent the next year exploring the land around Hightopp Hill, making careful maps so as to be able to find his way back to the door. One day, when he'd journeyed further than he had ever dared, he found a third door. This one wasn't in a tree, but hung seemingly suspended from the air itself. Opening it, Freddie found a rolling meadow, sweet with the smell of hay in the summer sun. It struck him that if there were three, perhaps there were many doors – all opening onto new adventures. By the time he was fifteen, he had (with a bit of help from Chess) discovered and mapped out a complicated network of dozens of doors and could travel from one side of Underland and back in less than a day.

His almost constant companion on his journeys was, of all people, Racie. Though two years his senior, she was nothing if not rebellious. She couldn't see the doors (Tarrant was the only other one who could, but he wasn't interested in exploring), so she was forever watching him to see when he disappeared from the castle and would run and catch up with him before he got far. He didn't mind, for the most part she left him alone to sketch in his journals while she explored or napped. Over the years, they became close friends. Racie seemed to be the only one genuinely interested in his discoveries and she shared his vehement hatred of dreary castle life. She would pour over his journals, especially the ones of Underland's creatures, studying his notes and occasionally asking him to tell her the story of when and where he found it or to clarify something.

But as Freddie and Racie grew older and closer, and he was able to read her thoughts more accurately, he began to sense something strange below the surface. A darkness, almost a madness, that seemed to hide behind every word and every action. When she was 18, she began studying "dominion over living things". Each child tutored at the castle, even the royal children, were expected to cultivate their talents, but Racie's choice filled Freddie with dread. In a world where, as the king's daughter, she could receive anything she asked for, why would she need to learn domination? Despite his misgivings, he, like everyone else, chalked it up as Racie just being her usual rebellious self. She would do anything if she thought it might upset her parents or raise a few eyebrows.

The next year showed her to be a quick study, however, and the more she learned, the more interested she became. She would lock herself in her study for hours, pouring over musty volumes of charms and potions. Others commented on how studious she had become, believing that she was finally leaving her incorrigible ways behind her. On their travels however, Freddie saw the other side of the person she was becoming. Gone were the days of two friends leisurely exploring the secrets of Underland. Racie began asking him strange questions of the creatures they had seen - interested in characteristics not logged in his journals, such as the weaknesses of the larger animals, their fears, and how one would capture a certain specimen. She would slip away from him while he was sketching, secretly testing her spells on the animals she managed to capture. Freddie had followed her on one occasion, horrified to find her seemingly deriving great pleasure from forcing a smaller animal to pick a fight with the predator she knew would devour it. She began to haunt his dreams at night, becoming not the pretty girl with long crimson curls and a sweet smile, but a prowling monster with razor sharp teeth and bloody claws – her mind unreadable and unreachable as she hunted him.

He ended up trying his best to just avoid her, but she always seemed to know where he was. Her behavior became more and more erratic until one day when they were many doors away from home, she suddenly tackled him as he sat writing. She pinned him to the ground, siting astride him, and leaned over, her lips nearly touching his. There was a wild look in her eyes and such madness in her mind that Freddie wasn't sure if she was planning to kiss him or to bite him. His nightmares flashed before his eyes. She hovered there for a moment before hopping up, laughing, and telling him she was only kidding. After that day, Freddie reached out and felt for Racie's mind before he left so as to avoid her following him when he left the castle.

He managed to avoid her completely for several months until one sunny morning at the end of his seventeenth year. He left the castle alone, not sensing Racie at all that day, but as he approached the door that was his starting point for all the others, she was waiting for him. She had packed a lunch for them so he grudgingly allowed her to tag along. She suggested a path that would lead them into Queast, north of Marmoreal. Freddie had no specific plans for the day, only to escape the castle, so he agreed.

Their door opened onto a field of ripe grain taller than their waists. There was a small clump of trees in the distance and they slowly made their way towards it and the shade. As they walked, Freddie began to wish they'd gone to the mountains north of Witzend instead. The sun was unbearably hot and he would have rather gone someplace cooler.

About halfway to their goal, Racie passed him a canteen of water which he took gratefully. He drank deeply, too distracted by the heat to notice the slightly 'off' taste of the water. No sooner had he passed it back to her than his vision swam and he stumbled. Dragging himself into a sitting position as his head began to pound, he realized with horror that she'd poisoned him. Iracebeth knelt before him, smiling sweetly as the journal he carried slipped from his fingers, and his now catatonic body refused to move. She ran her fingers through his hair and down his cheeks.

"Freddie...sweet Freddie...," she cooed. "Do you know why I brought you here today? No? You know, you and I, together we'll have enough power to rule all of Underland someday. I've prepared a little demonstration today so that, in the future, you'll know exactly what I can do to you. Someday, when I'm queen, I'll ask for your help, and your answer had better be '_yes_'. You seem to be avoiding me lately, which is too bad because this could have been so much more pleasant for you." She leaned closer, whispering in his ear while she unlaced his shirt. "That's okay, though...I'll enjoy it for both of us." She pulled back, face to face with him, "_Kiss me_, Freddie."

To his dismay, his arms encircled Iracebeth and his lips met hers without his own consent. Time seemed to stretch on unendingly as she forced his body to betray him, following only her commands as he screamed silently inside. He managed to close his eyes, vainly attempting to shut her out of his mind.

"Open your eyes, Freddie," she snapped. His eyes shot open. "I wouldn't want you to miss anything."

Her cruel experiments with the animals flashed across his memory – _Dominion over living creatures_. Now _he _was her helpless animal, trapped in the palm of her hand as she humiliated him over and over again. He had sensed the darkness in her soul before, and now he became inextricably linked forever with it as her madness washed over him. And in that madness, he saw all the years she'd spent befriending him, seemingly interested in what he was doing, had all been a lie. Everything from the beginning had been an elaborate scheme for future power. She'd been using him then as she used him now. He cursed the day he'd been born - a freak of nature - as she stole his innocence from him beneath the hot summer sun.

* * *

She left him alone (_and who the bloody hell cared where she went!_) with the admonition to "_Remember who you belong to, Freddie._" He lay for hours in the field after she had gone, until the potion finally ran it's course, and he was able to move again. He dressed and traveled back through the doors to Marmoreal. He entered entered the castle, quiet and sunburned, gathered his possessions, and left. He spoke to no one and left only a short note, explaining nothing, for his brother in his workshop.

He traveled by door until he found himself in the furthest reaches of the Outlands. There was little known about these lands in Underland proper and it was here that Freddie disappeared, traveling from place to place, occupying his mind with the things he found there. He didn't think of home – in his mind he had no home, and he swore he would never again set foot in Marmoreal. Time passed and though his spirit healed, the darkness stayed - lingering like the edge of a waking dream. He was in the Outlands for more than two years and was well into his twentieth year before he returned to Underland proper.

He went back to Witzend, to the land of his birth. He kept to himself, avoiding situations where he would be forced to talk about his previous life. Underland had changed considerably in the time he had been gone. The king had died, the kingdom split into Red and White. He was surprised that Mirana, the younger child, had ended up with the larger part encompassing Marmoreal and the Tulgey Wood while _(that other one_) was left with the lesser part of Crims.

What would eventually become his profession began with a festival. It was harvest time in the plains regions of Witzend and Iplam and members of all the clans living there had joined at Hightopp Hill. He avoided the adults like the plague, too many of them knew him well enough to ask about his travels. He didn't mind talking about the Outlands, but then they invariably got around to asking him why he had gone there in the first place. As far as Freddie was concerned, no one would ever know _why_.

The festival lasted for three days. On the first day of the festival, in order to escape having to be social, he began to tell a few children fantastic tales of creatures from the Outlands. Before his story was finished, a small crowd had gathered around him, enraptured by his adventures. The next morning, Freddie found a large group of children waiting for him, anxious for more information. He decided to take them on a hike around the Hill, pointing out the rarer plants and animals that they saw along the way, showing them how exciting being in their _own_ land could be if they just kept their eyes open. The next morning, to his chagrin, the clan elders were waiting for him, offering to pay him to teach their children to do what he loved to do.

Teaching offered him an opportunity to venture wherever he wanted, and the only time the darkness in his soul retreated completely was when he was with his students, exploring the mysteries of Underland. Those days were among the happiest in his life. It also gave him the excuse to keep away from the social life of the clan whose gossip seemed to center largely around which girl he would eventually marry, not that he talked to any of them. Despite his former oath, he found himself visiting Marmoreal occasionally, if only for short visits with Tarrant and Mirana. These visits were always in an inconspicuous place such as the kitchen where he didn't have to deal with anyone else, though Mirana seemed to have quite a habit of introducing him to some girl she hoped he'd approve of.

It wasn't that he was disinterested in women as most of his friends seemed to believe. He was afraid - afraid of what might happen on the day that Iracebeth came calling for him. He knew, with a sickening predictability, that the day _would_ come. She would find him, she would have him brought to her, and he would die a horrible death, because he would _**never **_help her again.  
What then did he have to offer anyone? A wife without a husband, a family without a father? No. He would never burden anyone else with his pain. Loneliness was better to live with, and sleep came easily at night when his was the only life in danger. He had three years of peace before his premonitions were realized.

* * *

It was a beautiful rest day, and the weather had just turned warmer with Spring in the air. Freddie was planning to journey back to the Outlands. It was a series of 6 doors to get there, always starting at the same one and from there having the choice of two within a short distance of the first.

Ten Red Guardsmen were waiting for him as he exited the first door. They knocked him cold, bound him, and escorted him back to the fortress at Crims where he was thrown into the dungeon before he even regained consciousness. He awoke, bloodied and bruised, into his own personal nightmare. It was a full day before anyone came for him. Finally, he was escorted to the throne room.

He hardly recognized the woman sitting before him. Something strange had happened to her head – it was no longer shaped normally, but grotesquely inflated. Her face was white, with a red heart drawn over the lips and almost comical eyeshadow. He had never seen her wearing makeup.

"Bow before your queen," ordered a Red Guardsman, racking him behind the knees with his spear and causing Freddie to fall to the floor.

"No," said Iracebeth, as Freddie stood back up defiantly, "that won't be necessary. Frederick and I are old friends, aren't we?" He said nothing. "So, Freddie, dear...I'm sure you remember the question. I'm waiting for your answer."

He spat in her face, earning him another blow from the guard, knocking him back to the ground.

"I'm sure you'll change your mind soon," she said. "Take him to Stayne. He can deal with him."

He was dragged to another room in the dungeon, his shirt torn off, and his wrists chained to two posts anchored in the floor of the cell. The earth around the posts was stained with the blood of many, and the entire room smelled of filth and vomit. A tall man, with long scraggly black hair entered the room. His face was marked with a scar that ran over one eye which had been concealed with a heart shaped patch. He swaggered over to the posts, grabbed Freddie's hair, and yanked his head back to look at him.

"You must be the famous Freddie Hightopp," he said, his voice soft and snakelike. "I am Ilosovic Stayne, and I'm going to show you what pain _really_ feels like."

Freddie lost count of how many times the whip cut into him. He refused to cry out as the tears coursed down his face, and his own blood stained the ground beneath him. He knew it wouldn't be long before he was a dead man, so he tried valiantly to hold onto the only thing he had left - his pride. The beating finally ended and he was tossed back into his cell – to live, or to die and rot – Freddie didn't care. No one came for him the next day, or the next, or the next. During all that time, he refused to eat or drink anything that was brought to him. He knew all too well it would be laced with something. He might have died from thirst had the heavens not opened up on the fourth day and sent such a downpour that water ran in rivulets down the walls of his prison. Freddie drank what he could of the rainwater.

On the sixth day, he was once again brought before Iracebeth who asked him her question again. He stared back at her in silent determination. She leaned over close to him, her madness wrapping around his mind, and whispered.  
"Know this, Freddie – today is the day you will curse for the rest of your life. In the future, when you think about I did, I want you to know that it was all _your_ fault." She motioned to the guards. "Cut him loose."

"What are you doing?" he asked, confused.

"I'm letting you go," she said flippantly. "Tomorrow the Jabberwock flies to meet the White Queen's pathetic excuse for a champion. Tomorrow, Underland will be mine."

Fred found himself tossed (literally) out of the gates of the Red Queen's fortress. Painfully, he made his way through the doors that would lead him to Marmoreal. There, in the inner court, he collapsed.

When he awoke the next morning, his wounds had been bathed and treated. Mirana and Tarrant were both by his bedside, their faces watching him anxiously. He tried to warn them (without telling them the _whole _truth) that something was going to happen that day, something horrible. They already knew about the challenge Iracebeth had made to Mirana's champion, though, and so brushed off his concerns as pertaining to that and nothing else.

"That's not it! You're not listening to me, that's not what she meant!"

"Freddie, dear," said Mirana, "There's nothing to worry about. The white knight can handle the Jabberwock. You've been though a lot the last few days, you should rest."

* * *

Freddie left Marmoreal against Mirana's wishes and journeyed with the other's to the Tulgey Wood where the Jabberwock was to meet the White Queen's champion. The Clans from Witzend and Iplam gathered on Hightopp Hill, confident in the champion's abilities. On the battlefield, the White Queen's champion stood, awaiting the summons. The Jabberwock approached, his huge black wings blotting out the sun. Faced with his moment of truth, the White Champion dropped the Vorpal sword and ran, only to be skewered by the claws of the great beast. The fight should have ended there. It was an unspoken oath, a bond, that only the champions were to fight. An uneasy silence settled over the crowd.

Freddie's vision suddenly skewed and he saw everything as in slow motion. He saw everyone on the hill, everyone in Witzend and Iplam slaughtered. He saw the Jabberwock, it's eyes of flame, burning the villages of his homeland, leaving a land of death and desolation. He saw the children dying and bleeding. His vision ended and he screamed, _"Run! Run! Run!_" and ran himself, but his vision was of the future shortly to come, and no one in the waiting crowd was listening to the crazy lunatic running towards an invisible door in the valley of the Tulgey Wood.

That day, Iracebeth of Crims slaughtered nearly everyone that Freddie had ever known.

* * *

_A/N: If you check out the "Visual Guide to Long Journey Home" (link on my profile), Take a better look at the chick with Rik Mayall from the cover of "Dancing Queen". It didn't even occur to me until I'd planned out Freddie's Story that Helena Bohnam Carter is the one who played Iracebeth. She's so much younger in that movie._

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	15. Perfect Storm

"_There's no time for us.  
There's no place for us._  
_What is this thing that builds our dreams,  
yet slips away from us?_

_There's no chance for us.  
It's all decided for us._  
_This world has only one sweet moment  
set aside for us._

_...Who wants to live forever,  
who dares to love forever,  
when love must die?"_  
-Queen

* * *

Fred's life, his memories, who he was, and who he'd become sprang to life before his eyes in brilliant technicolor. His parents, his sister _(his beautiful, wonderful, sweet sister..._), his brother, Mirana, the fields and woods of Witzend, Marmoreal, the doors, the beauty of Underland, every charge and assignment he'd taken in Elphyne, ...and the pain of Iracebeth's eternal darkness. His eyes saw only the past, there was no cavern, there were no walls nor floor around him. He was falling, falling through his vision – careening towards the madness. Lost in himself, he didn't feel Lizzie as she caught him the best she could as he fell to the floor.

"Fred!" Lizzie cried as she shook him, not caring for her own safety. "Fred!" His eyes were open, his pupils dilated eerily, lost in another world. She sat, pulling him into her arms as she had during his nightmare the day before. Her tears wet his face as she rested her forehead on his. "Fred," she pleaded, "come back to me. _Please_, Fred...look at me. Please, It's me, Lizzie, please, Fred..." She wasn't going to let him give up, not now! "_DAMNITFREDWAKEUP!_"

Through the darkness, Freddie heard a voice. It stopped his fall, but not the vision, which shifted now to events which had transpired after he had left Underland the last time. He saw the armies of the Red Queen, marching across Witzend and Iplam, cutting down young and old alike in their wake. He heard Iracebeth, the White Champion dead, command the Jabberwock to show no mercy as it attacked the clans gathered on the Hill. He saw his brother, Tarrant, digging the trenches that would hold the bodies of their people, then fill them – dragging their stiffened corpses, broken, bloated, and dismembered into the pits until they lay layer upon layer. Their pale, unseeing eyes focused on Fred's in silent accusation.

His vision ended and he awoke, finding Lizzie's eyes staring at him in place of those of the dead. He rolled out of her arms and onto his hands and knees where he retched violently until his body trembled. Lizzie put her arm around him, but he shook it off.

"No!" He picked himself up. "Just leave me be..."

He ran back through the cavern towards the outside, knowing his way even in the dark – he'd been here many times before. If it had only been himself, without Lizzie, he would have kept running. There was a door in the first chamber of the cave, he could open it and be gone and disappear again, this time forever. No one else would ever suffer again because of him. He left the cave, passing by the door and stumbled into the fading light of the evening sun and sat down, leaning against a tree a short distance away. Now that he could see clearly, with all his past laid out before him, his heart grieved for what he knew he must do. Lizzie, _his_ Lizzie...he had to send her home. She deserved so much more than the broken man he knew himself to be. Her heart would heal, he told himself. If she could see inside his, she wouldn't want him anyway. He sensed her approaching and fought with himself over just how much he should tell her. She knelt beside him, and waited. After a few minutes, Fred raised his tear stained face. His eyes, unreadable, met hers. He said nothing.

"I need to know," she said softly.

He turned his eyes from hers, looking instead across the horizon and sighed. "It doesn't have a happy ending."

"Your life isn't over, yet."

It might as well be, he thought.

* * *

He told her his story, most of it anyway, as she sat listening. He did not tell her why he had gone to the Outlands, only that it was a place he had visited on his travels, surgically removing the reason from his narrative. He felt her anger as he told her of Iracebeth's fortress and what had happened there. Then of his vision at Hightopp Hill, running though the door, only to find that it had been bewitched. He found himself, not near Marmoreal where it should have led, but in a small brick room, behind a fireplace. He ran through the fire to find a creature named Stibbler waiting for him. Knowing the door would not be safe to return through just then, he was forced to wait in the land he would come to know as Elphyne until nightfall. Stibbler was kind and professed to have no knowledge of Underland or any other realms save the one from which Lizzie was from. He offered him a drink, "to take the edge off, lad" as Freddie waited impatiently to return. The bitterness of the drink itself masked the potion it contained. He remembered feeling strange, as if he couldn't think clearly, everything about himself becoming more and more like a dream.

"What did you give me?" he asked, fearfully.

"I'm sorry, son," the goat-man pleaded, "the Red Queen has my family...she'll kill them if you return. I didn't give you the one she sent me," he held up a small red vial. "I swear, lad, someday when it's safe, I'll show you the way back home."

His memories slipped like sand through his fingers until they were gone, taking Freddie with them.

* * *

As Lizzie listened to Fred's story, she saw what he could not see, how the pieces of himself that could never truly be lost or forgotten - the innate person who he was, shone through in the man that she knew. His kindness and patience with children, his loyalty to those he cared for, his selflessness, and so many other facets of his personality. She felt nothing but hatred for Iracebeth, not only for the depth of her cruelty for the murder of so many innocent lives, but for laying the guilt at Fred's feet.

"Fred," she said when he had fallen silent, "it wasn't your fault. _She _was the one who sent the armies and the Jabberwock, _she_ made the choice, not you. You tried to warn them."

"No, Lizzie, it _was_ my fault. I _knew _she would come for me, and if I'd been smarter would have slit my own throat before she did. I would have gladly done it to spare them."

Lizzie was appalled at his self-degradation. "Don't say that!"

Fred continued, ignoring her, "They should have strung her up and let her die slowly. Lopping off her head was too quick."

Lizzie was confused, hadn't Alice said that they'd banished her? "Alice said they exiled her and Stayne..."

The change in Fred was immediate. Anger, hatred, fear, and a dozen other emotions flashed over his face as he stood. "She's not _dead_? What do you mean, they _exiled _her?"

"To the Outlands. Alice said.."

Fred began walking towards Torineil, shouting various words she took to be obscenities. "...Damn slurking, slurvish, skut_!_..." The penalty for her crimes should have been execution. He should have known Mirana wouldn't kill her sister.

"Fred, wait..." said Lizzie, running after him. He took the claymore from where it was fastened to the horse's armor, and buckled it around his own waist. "What are you doing?"

He didn't answer her, but addressed Torineil instead. "Thank you for your kind service, Torineil. You should go back to Marmoreal. I can take Lizzie there faster myself by door."

"You are certain?"

The sky was already growing dark. "If we leave tomorrow at first light, we should reach Marmoreal by evening." He removed their packs from the horse's back and bid him farewell. Lizzie watched as Torineil left on his way to Marmoreal.

"What was that all about?"

He still didn't answer her, but began walking back up the hill towards the cavern. "Come on," he said. "We'll need to make a fire. It gets cold here at night."

Lizzie decided to bide her time and helped him find wood before night fell. Something wasn't right, he hadn't looked at her once since she'd told him Iracebeth wasn't dead. This was a mood of his she wasn't familiar with and the fact she couldn't read him worried her tremendously.

* * *

When the fire was made, instead of sitting down as he normally would, Fred continued to avoid her, wandering off into the dark instead. She called for him, but he refused to answer, and with the light from the fire behind her, she could see nothing out into the darkness. Little did she know he was less than ten feet away, sitting in the night, watching her as she looked for him. After a while she wrapped her cloak around herself and lay down. If he was waiting until she fell asleep to come back, she'd pretend she was until he did. She didn't know how long she lay there, her eyes watching the fire from the slit she'd left under the bottom of her hood. Finally she heard the soft scrape of his boots as he returned and sat down. She sat up, ready to tackle him as best she could if he decided to run off again.

"Stop avoiding me and tell me what's going on."

"You're supposed to be asleep," he said without looking at her.

Lizzie got up and moved over beside him.

"What is it you're not telling me?" she asked. "Why are you in such a hurry to get to Marmoreal? I thought you hated it there."

Fred still refused to look at her and said quietly, "You have to go home, Lizzie. Mirana will know how to get you there."

"What are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere, I'm staying here with you!"

He turned to her, his blue eyes shining fiercely with unwept tears in the firelight. "No, you're not! I'm sorry, Lizzie, but you have to leave."

She searched his face, trying to understand why he would be sending her away. The only thing that came to mind was that perhaps he'd realized that she wasn't the right one for him, after all. "You don't want me," she said, softly.

"_That's_ what you think?" he cried. "You think I don't _want_ you? Don't ever say that! You deserve so much more than I could ever give you. You're all that I have left, and I _swore_ I would never hurt you again. I'll never let _anyone_ be hurt by me again."

"And you think sending me away isn't going to hurt me?" she asked, baffled. "I _love _you_,_ and _I_ swore I'd never leave you!"

Her words cut at him and he closed his eyes briefly, turning from her. It wouldn't be easy to make her understand. "Everything I touch dies, Lizzie. Everything I've ever loved has been destroyed because of me - because I'm a freak. Iracebeth took it all from me, piece by piece, and left me nothing but her madness. When you're safely gone, I'll find her, and I'll do what I should have done instead of running away."

"What do mean?" She was desperately afraid she knew exactly what he meant.

"I have a destiny here, Lizzie. A life for a life. A soul for a soul. She stole minelongago."

"You're going to kill her..."

He shouldn't have told her anything about his plans for Iracebeth. He could feel her searching for a way to change his mind. "Go home, Lizzie," he said softly. "Find someone to make you happy and forget about me. I'm not worth shedding tears over." He stood up and walked to the edge of the firelight.

Lizzie went to stand in front of him. "How can you say that about yourself? All the things that happened to you, none of them were your fault!" She paused, taking his face in her hands, making him look at her. "What did she do to you that, even now in exile, she has such control over how you live? So much that she could make you turn away from the one who loves you more than life itself?"

He realized how well she must know him, that she could ask the question that no one else had ever asked. From the time she had begun hunting him in his nightmares when he was 16, until today, 23 Underland years and half a world away later, Racie still held him in the palm of her hand. He couldn't remember a time before he lived in fear of her.

"That's another story..," he said quietly. "And I don't want to talk about it. You should sleep, we have a long walk tomorrow." He turned and walked away, disappearing back into the darkness beyond the fire, leaving her alone.

* * *

Lizzie dreamed of Fred, the Fred before he remembered his past, and of the final kiss they'd shared. She woke in the morning to find him sitting a few feet from her, asleep with his back against a tree. He looked so peaceful as she knelt beside him. What could have happened to so destroy his spirit? Whatever it was, she sensed it had happened long before Horunvendush Day. That had been a savage act of war, but something about his demons seemed far more...personal. She ran her fingers through his hair and he opened his eyes. A ghost of the Fred she missed smiled at her before he remembered where he was. She placed a gentle kiss on his lips, but he didn't return it.

"Please...don't, Lizzie. That won't make things easier."

She sighed sadly and moved back beside him. If he was going to push her away, she at least wanted to know why – a _real _reason, not just that he thought he didn't deserve her (which was crap anyway).

"I want to know what's wrong with you," she said. "The _real _story – the one you don't want to talk about."

He didn't answer her. They sat in silence for a long, long time. Lizzie was just about to get up when he spoke, so quietly she almost couldn't hear him even though she was sitting by his side.

"It was a summer day, and I was seventeen..," he began in barely more than a whisper.

Lizzie listened, horrified as he told her what Iracebeth had done to him and why he'd gone to the Outlands. About the darkness that had haunted him since that day, the day she'd forced him to partake of her madness. Lizzie knew she was the only one who had ever heard this story. Mirana and Tarrant had never understood, convinced he simply preferred to be alone. In reality he believed that someday Iracebeth would have him killed and wasn't willing to sacrifice someone else's happiness for his own. She wondered if there had ever been a time, other than the previous morning behind the waterfall, when he had thought of himself and what _he _wanted. She understood why he wanted her to leave, but it only strengthened her resolve to stay, knowing that he was pushing her away to try and protect her from the monster he deemed himself to be.

He finished his story, and Lizzie put her arms around him and held him while her tears fell for the pain that he'd lived with for so long.

"Don't cry for me, Lizzie," he said, quietly. He didn't want her to feel sorry for him. "Please, don't cry for me."

"Why not?" she asked. "Someone should, and I don't think you ever have."

"I didn't tell you so you'd feel sorry for me. I wanted you to understand why you have to go. I have nothing, Lizzie, not even myself to offer you. Her madness is still here, haunting me, and inside I'm dead...like the plains of Iplam."

She met his eyes and placed her hand on his face, softly brushing his cheek with her thumb. "It doesn't have to be that way. Let me help you learn to live again."

He shook his head sadly. "It's too late for me," he said, ignoring the part within himself that wanted so badly to stay in Lizzie's arms and let her love him. He removed her arms from around him and stood. "Come on, we need to leave."


	16. The Road Less Travelled

_A/N: You'll probably want to check out Freddie's Map of Underland for this story which shows the doors he's found and where they lead. You can find the link at the top of my profile page._

_Just remember: Into every life, a little rain must fall...and an occasional torrential downpour._

_

* * *

_

"_Hold me,  
even though I know you're leaving,  
and show me all the reasons you would stay..._

_Give me  
just one part of you to cling to,  
and keep me everywhere you are.  
_

_Please, don't go-_  
_let me have you just one moment more.  
All I need, all I want,  
is just one moment more."_  
-Mindy Smith

* * *

After they had put out the fire and gathered their packs, Lizzie followed Fred back up into the cavern. Their torch had burned itself out, so he took her hand and led her through the dark. He made a right as they entered, and light flooded the room as he opened the door that was hidden in the wall of the cave.

"Go ahead," he said, "but watch your step, they're usually not on the ground."

She stepped out of the door and onto a rocky area beside a road. Fred followed her through the door, and it closed behind him, disappearing to Lizzie's eyes. The road was narrow, no more than a meter wide, paved with smooth round rocks that looked like they had been well worn by water or weather. Both sides were bounded by thick tufts of dark green grass, and the road stretched into the distance until it disappeared over the rise of the next hill. The area, other than containing an invisible door, was wholly unremarkable. There were woods off to their left, though still quite far away.

"Where are we?" asked Lizzie.

"On the outskirts of the Tulgey Wood." He motioned towards the trees in the distance. "If we were to keep walking south for about six hours, we would be at the windmill, but that's not the fastest way to go. We'll need to follow the road for a while."

They walked down the trail, passing the area where Lizzie supposed the door still stood. After about an hour of walking, the scenery began to change. The trees which had before been tall and verdant, became broken and twisted, their dead limbs cracked and gnarled. The ground was dusty, the grass sparse and whithered. Lizzie felt as though they'd entered some sort of bizarre Halloween-town. It was hard to believe that just a few miles back the land had been lush and living.

"Why is it like this...the trees? Why are they all dead?"

"We're on the border of Crims now," was all the information Fred offered. Another hour of walking brought them to another road, this one running perpendicular to theirs. It was wider than the trail they had been following and was bordered by a ramshackle fence in desperate need of repair. The road ended at the top of a hill to the left where a huge tree, it's curled and crooked arms like sentinels, pointed on one side to Queast and behind them to Snud.

"It's not much further," said Fred, "just across the road and down the next valley."

Sure enough, when they'd crossed the road, the land gradually fell away until they found themselves in a valley, the flora here once again alive and green. Fred stopped in front of a large tree, opened the next door, and they stepped through. The first thing Lizzie noticed was that she was standing not on soil, but on the solid rock of a short bluff. Around them were woods where tall trees had grown up through cracks in the rock. The cracks had widened over time so that it looked more as though the rocks, partially covered with moss and lichen. had grown up around the trees than the other way around. Lizzie didn't think this could be the Tulgey Woods, the trees here were more like the ones they had seen near the Crystal Cavern, evergreens with sharp pointy needles. Behind them rose a cliff, the rock face soaring high above them, pocketed by small crags smoothed out of the stone over time by the water dripping down them. The door they had come through was in the side of the rock.

Lizzie placed her hand against the stone, feeling the cool water run over her fingers. It was here, in what she would learn from Fred were part of the Grampus Bluffs of western Snud, that she began to see a flicker of life in Fred's previously dour demeanor. She watched him closely out of the corner of her eye, as he took in the scenery around them - a slight smile tugging at his lips. She said nothing, quietly observing the change in him as they journeyed over the rocks and through the woods towards the next door. It wasn't long before they were forced to stop. Before them stood the edge of the bluffs, and the ground fell away sharply in front of them. In the valley below, stretching as far and wide as she could see, was an ocean of yellow flowers.

"What are they?" asked Lizzie. "There's so many!"

"It's gowan," answered Fred. "It's kind of like canola in your world. The seeds are ground for oil. It's the main crop here in Snud." He pointed far off to their left. "You can just make out the Tulgey Woods. The first door we opened in Iplam opens to the door just over there."

"How many doors are there?"

Fred thought for a moment. "More than I've found. I know of about 40 or so, but I'm sure that's not all of them. Most I found on accident while mapping Underland, but Chess helped with a few."

"How in the world do you remember where they all are?"

"I used to have to use my maps...but I seem to remember a lot of things more clearly now," he added quietly, a pained look crossing his face. "There's a way down over here."

While they walked, Lizzie began to formulate a plan, a strategy for at least bringing out the happier side of Fred until they reached Marmoreal. His mood seemed to lighten when he was explaining something to her, which fit with his love of teaching and Underland. If she could get him to focus on that, perhaps she'd be able to comfort him circumspectly. Fred led them to a narrow path and they climbed down to the field below. The flowers came up above their waists.

"So these flowers don't gripe and complain?" she asked, running her hand over the tops of the blooms.

He laughed. "No, these flowers aren't sentient like the ones in the Tulgey Wood. They're just normal flowers."

She picked one and smelled it and immediately sneezed.

Fred smiled knowingly. "It's also closely related to rag-weed."

They walked for what seemed like hours and Lizzie found herself disoriented in the endless yellow sea. "Are we actually getting somewhere? I hope _you_ know where you're going, it all looks the same to me."

"We aren't too far away. This gate is the furthest we'll have to travel to...and I always know where I'm going."

A breeze blew across the field, moving the flowers like waves across a golden sea. Here, wandering through his beloved Underland again, Fred felt the blackness recede to the edge of his consciousness, clearing his mind and allowing him to think easier. He imagined how different his life would have been had Lizzie been his companion growing up. He could barely look at her without feeling his heart in his throat. Her green dress and windswept dark hair contrasted sharply with the yellow flowers, and he thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful as Lizzie that day, wandering through the gowan. He walked faster, putting her behind him, away from his sight.

Finally they came to their third door in the middle of the field of flowers. It opened into a thick, dark woods.

"The next door isn't very far from this one," said Fred. "There are three doors here in Queast and then we'll be in Marmoreal. Of course, the second one doesn't really count since it's where we'll come out from this next one."

Lizzie's heart sank. Only two more doors to find before they were in Marmoreal and the sun wasn't getting low in the sky at all. It couldn't be much later than two o'clock. By this rate, they _would_ be in Marmoreal by evening. She had hoped Fred had miscalculated and that it would take them an extra day, but apparently he was spot on with his timing. Lizzie desperately set about trying to side-track them. She began asking him about the trees, animals, and flowers that they passed, and Fred obligingly stopped to tell her about them. He found himself so caught up, he didn't notice their pace had fallen off dramatically. Most of the foliage was similar to the that from Lizzie's realm (though the leaves seemed to be quite huge comparatively speaking), until they came to a singular tree on a grassy knoll. Sitting apart by itself in the dense forest, the sunlight which had been blocked by the thick canopy above them filtered through the tops of it's branches, lighting it like a beacon from heaven.

"Come on, Lizzie," said Fred, impatiently. "We're wasting time."

"What's this one?" she asked, awestruck.

"Nothing, just a weird tree. Come on..."

Lizzie glanced suspiciously over at Fred who was looking everywhere else but at her. What kind of tree was this that Freddie, tour guide of Underland, didn't want to talk about? It was obviously special. She noticed it had peculiar structures (she supposed either fruits or seeds) hanging from the branches. They were concentric rings, one inside the other, connected by a threadlike vein. The small ring spun within the larger. She reached for one.

"Don't pick that!"

"Why not? What's it going to do to me?"

"Nothing. I'm leaving..." He proceeded to walk away.

Lizzie waited until his back was turned, plucked one off the tree and stuck it in her pack. If he didn't want to tell her what it was, she'd just ask Alice or Mirana when they got to Marmoreal. She hurried to catch up to him. "Hey, so...do the trees really talk?"

"Yes."

"What are they saying?"

"That someone's dragging her feet."

* * *

About ten minutes later, they came to their fourth door. This one led to a place quite different from any other she'd been to so far in Underland. They stood on a sandy beach, and before them stretched an enormous sea of reddish water. There was a huge sand dune to her right and before Fred could protest, Lizzie kicked off her shoes and ran to the top of it. She slid down the other side, collapsing at the bottom with a laugh.

"Lizzie, we don't have time for that. We're already behind."

"You're not in charge of me, Fred," she called from the other side. "I want to enjoy being here first. Come on...I know you want to..."

He didn't answer her and she was beginning to think she'd actually managed to piss him off when he suddenly landed beside her.

"This was one of my favorite places to come," he said, smiling. "What do you think the name of the sea is?"

"Hmm... I don't know, the Red Sea?"

"Close, the Crimson Sea. The red's from the algae. When I was little, there used to be traders visit from across it. I don't think anyone has made that journey in a long time, though. Crims was the natural sea port." He gazed off into the distance.

"I didn't realize there were other lands beyond Underland." said Lizzie, surprised.

"Well, it's all Underland, but what I've always thought of as Underland Proper isn't the only land here in this realm. There are the Outlands, then there's the lands across the Crimson Sea."

"Have you ever been there?"

"Me? No. Though I looked for a door for a long time."

"How do you know there's a door that leads there if you never found one?" she asked.

"There's an old rhyme we learned when we were little. It doesn't mean much unless you know that there actually _are_ doors...

_'Yadder beyond the Crimson Sea,  
the boats they bob so merrily,  
__Bringing all the lands afar  
__Across the brine unto thy door._

_See the flax from Altherea,  
__Reddish gold as bruxel-bees.  
__The smell of spice from Christolom  
__Ullam's jewels shine like the sun._

_Do you sit and dream, my child  
__Of distant lands beyond the wild?  
__If you seek with open eyes,  
__The **distant **doors shall never hide.'"_

Lizzie listened with rapt attention as he quoted the poem to her. "So all those places are real? Across the sea?"

"Yes, I once saw the King of Ullam when I was a child at Marmoreal. No one knows what has become of those lands after Iracebeth... at least not that_ I _know of anymore..." he finished quietly.

They sat in silence, listening to the waves crash onto the shore. The daylight was fading faster.

"Lizzie," he said softly, "we really have to go."

"Please, Fred, can't we stay here tonight? I just want to be with you," begged Lizzie, trying not to cry. "I swear I won't touch you," she added quietly, turning away so he wouldn't see her tears.

"Lizzie...this is why I wanted us to just get there," he said sadly. "It's not going to make leaving any easier."

Lizzie turned to Fred, her eyes flashing with anger, "What the hell do you think will make it easier, Fred? How do you think it feels for you to send me away, knowing you want me to stay, just so you can keep being miserable?" she cried. "I don't care what happened to you! I don't care what you've done, or where you've been, or what you're going to be –_ nothing_ will ever change how much I love you! If I can't have you, then at least let me sit and be with you. Please, don't break my heart anymore today...tomorrow will have enough of that."

When she finished he rose. "You'd better find some wood if we're staying on the beach," he said thickly. He walked away before she could see him cry.

Lizzie lay back on the sand and closed her eyes. What had she done? She'd been holding her peace, and she was sure she could talk him into staying. What on earth had possessed her to fly off the handle at him? She'd meant every word she'd said, though, and the hardest part was that she was _right_. She knew he wanted to be with her, but he'd gotten this crazy idea stuck in his head that she was better off without him, regardless of what she thought about it. This wasn't how she was hoping this day would end. Reluctantly, she got up and went to look for driftwood.

Fred had already started a fire, far enough back from the shore to be safe from the tides. Lizzie added what she had found to it and took a seat. Fred sat, quietly staring into the fire.

"I'm sorry," she said. Fred looked at her, confused. "For getting upset. That wasn't what I intended."

"You've got nothing to be sorry for, Lizzie," he said. "_I'm _sorry. I never meant to break your heart."

Lizzie sighed and said nothing. What could she say? Perhaps someday he would stop leaving her. This would make the third time. All she could think to do was bide her time and be patient. She wasn't leaving Underland, so surely he couldn't hide from her forever. Maybe one day, she'd find the right words to say to make him stay.

"Are you going to stay at Marmoreal for a while?" she asked.

"No, probably not."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know, Lizzie.

"To find Iracebeth?"

"I'm tired...good-night," was his only answer. He got up and moved to the far side of their fire and lay down, wrapping his cloak around him and pulling the hood over his head, effectively ending further conversation. When he finally slept, his nightmares were gone, replaced for the first time since he was young by normal dreams, but his dreams were all of Lizzie.

Lizzie sat watching the fire for a long time before she, too, lay down and slept.

* * *

Her first terrifying thought when she woke and didn't see him was that he'd left her. His pack was still beside the fire though. The tracks from his boots led to the shore, and she followed them to the dunes they were at the day before. Quietly, she climbed to the top, lay down on the sand and looked over the side. He was there, sitting, staring at the sea. She watched him, refusing to believe that this could be the last day she ever saw him.

"Are you ready to leave?" he asked without looking up, startling her.

"No, not really." she said, picking herself up.

Fred stood up and walked back around to the other side of the dune. "I told Torineil we'd be back yesterday. They'll be worried about us."

"I doubt it," she replied. "He's probably not back, yet. They don't even know we're coming."

"Oh, I'm sure they know we're coming. I wouldn't be surprised if Chess has been slurking about occasionally."

"How far away are we?"

"Not more than an hour. The next door is right over there." He motioned towards nothing that Lizzie could see.

They packed up and went through the last door into the province of Marmoreal. The door stood on a hill and from it they could see the castle far to the south-west of them. They walked in silence until they were nearly upon it. As they approached the gate to the outer court, Lizzie suddenly threw her arms around Fred before he could stop her. To her surprise, he put his own around her, holding her tightly as she clung to him.

"I'm so sorry, Lizzie." he whispered. "I never meant to hurt you. I wish I could make you understand...I'm only trying to protect you and the best way I know to do that is to let you go."

"That's not fair, and you know it. I don't want protection...I want _you._"

"I'm sorry," was all he said.

She finally released him and wiped her tears.

* * *

Mirana watched them as they embraced and then entered the outer courtyard. She placed the small telescope back onto its stand and made her way from the balcony to the inner court, pondering over what she'd seen.

"Have Tarrant meet us in the inner courtyard," she directed one of her courtiers. "I want him there when I meet Freddie and Lizzie."

* * *

_A/N: sigh I know, I know...poor Lizzie. If it's any consolation, I hate Fred acting this way, too... I'll probably throw the next chapter up really soon...I'd like to get on with the third part of the story.  
_

_Gowan is an old Scottish term for a yellow flower, such as a buttercup or daisy._

_Again, if you check out Freddie's Map of Underland on my profile, it will explain the doors and the paths they take.  
_


	17. Disjointed Spirits

"_If I cried out loud  
all the sorrows I've known,  
and the secrets I've heard -  
it would ease my mind  
someone sharing the load,  
but I won't breathe a word._

_We're two of a kind, silence and I,  
we need a chance to talk things over.  
Two of a kind, silence and I,  
we'll find a way to work it out."  
_-The Alan Parsons Project

* * *

Tarrant met Mirana at the steps leading down to the inner court, just outside the castle.

"They have arrived?" he asked.

"Yes." Mirana did not look at the Hatter, instead keeping her focus on the pair now entering the inner court hand in hand. Tarrant's attention was now drawn to them as well. They watched as Fred stopped and hugged Lizzie tightly but then released her and disappeared down another path, leaving her standing alone. It was hard to tell from that distance, but Mirana was fairly sure Lizzie was crying.

"I think you should follow your brother," she said to Tarrant. "Something doesn't seem right."

Tarrant nodded his head in acknowledgement and turned back to enter the castle. If Freddie had his memories back as he should, there was only one reason he would run off down that particular path without acknowledging himself or Mirana, who he knew would be watching for his arrival. He was running away again.

Tarrant racked his brain for a plan and made a quick stop by Mirana's laboratory. He'd need to hurry, the path Freddie had taken led directly to the west wing of the castle where his room was. If he was too late, his brother would be gone before he could talk to him, and no onedisappeared as well as he did. He took the stairs two at a time until he came to Freddie's room. He opened the door to find him, his back to the door, packing.

"Thanks for knocking," said Fred, sarcastically.

Tarrant entered and closed the door behind him. "Just where do y' think you're goin'?"

Fred didn't answer, but began taking his journals out of the chest and stacking them neatly on the dresser.

Tarrant walked around the bed towards him. "So you're runnin' off again?"

"I'm not running off," he said, not stopping to look at his brother.

"What th' hell is this, then?" Tarrant dumped his pack out onto the bed.

Fred grabbed the pack back from him. "Piss off, Tarrant."

Tarrant, not to be thwarted by his little brother, tried a new direction. "Okay, so why are ya' runnin' away from _Lizzie_?"

"Because she can do better than me."

"You're makin' even less sense than ya' normally do... So you're leavin' her 'cause she wants t' be with ya'?"

"You wouldn't understand," Fred snapped, throwing his clothes back in his pack. He slung it over his shoulder and tried to make his way past Tarrant who stood in his way.

"You're right, Freddie! No one understands you, 'cause ya' never talk to anyone! Ya' just run off and no one sees ya' fer two or three or fifteen years! You're not goin' anywhere 'til ya' tell me what the bloody hell's goin' on." Tarrant crossed his arms and stood in front of the door.

Fred's eyes flashed angrily as he was forced to stop in front of Tarrant. "Well, then...let me enlighten you a bit, dear brother. Do ya' know why Racie killed everyone on Horunvendush Day? Ya' think it was just her bein' her usual delightful self?" His voice shifted strangely between his customary English accent and the brogue of his native tongue as he spoke. "She told me she was comin' for me. When I was seventeen. She told me she was goin' t' ask me t' help her."

"Why would she do that?"

"'Cause I ken see th' future, 'cause I ken read people's minds...I'm a great_ pet_ t' have, Tarrant!" he shouted. "An' then when she did ask me t' help her, an' I said _no,_ she told me I'd be sorry, an' let me go."

Tarrant was at a loss. This was more than his brother had ever told him about himself for as long as he could remember. It explained a great many things. "Ya' should've told me," he said quietly.

"How was I supposed to know what she'd do? I thought she'd just kill _me, _I din't know she was plannin' t' kill everyone else _instead_!"

"That din't have anythin' t' do wit ya', Freddie," Tarrant said, gently. "Th' clans were th' ones leadin' th' rebellion. She'd already threatened t' wipe 'em out." He could tell from Fred's face that he never knew that. "An' if you'd stay around for more 'an a day, you'd've known that."

"It doesn't matter," he said, refusing to be comforted. "There's more wrong with me than just that."

Tarrant gave him a long look. "There's things wrong with everyone! It's life. Ya' think I dont have problems? _I'm half mad_!"

Fred turned away and flipped though the top journal on his stack, ignoring him. Tarrant decided to go back to the only subject that seemed to phase his brother - Lizzie.

"Do ya' love her?"

Fred stopped flipping pages and closed the book, but didn't turn around. "Yes."

"Does she love _you_?"

A pause. "Yes."

"But you're gonna leave anyway? Why are ya' in such a hurry t' die a slow death? 'Cause that's exactly what you're gonna do. Why dont ya' just save us all the heartache and get it over with right now..." Tarrant took a small red vial out of his pocket and set it on the dresser in front of Fred.

Freddie looked at the vial and then at Tarrant, unsure of what his brother was playing at. "What's that?"

"What do ya' think it looks like?" he asked. "'It's poison. Go ahead, drink it up an' get th' dyin' part over with, 'cause that's what you'll be doin' if ya' run away again'. Live or die, Freddie, it's time t' choose one or th'other."

Fred spun around and headed towards the door, shoving his brother out of the way. He left, slamming it behind him.

Tarrant shook his head and sighed sadly, putting the red vial of water back in his pocket.

* * *

Lizzie took a deep breath and walked up through the courtyard to the stairs where Mirana waited.

"Hello Lizzie," she said kindly. "How was your journey?"

Lizzie searched for an adequate reply to the queen's question and finally decided on, "Enlightening."

"Hmm...that's an answer that begs another question. You'll have to tell me all about it later. Where has Freddie gone to?"

"He left," she replied, bluntly, avoiding the queen's gaze.

Mirana looked suspiciously at her. "I can see that. Where has he left _to_?"

"I'm sorry, Mirana, I don't know." She didn't think telling her that he'd left to kill her sister was a good idea.

Mirana decided to leave it at that for now. Lizzie looked as though she could sleep for a week. She dubiously hoped that was the problem with Freddie as well. She trusted Tarrant had been able to find him.

"Come, you look as though you could use a warm bath, hot meal, and soft bed. Follow me."

"Thank you," said Lizzie, grateful at not having to explain anything further. She followed Mirana up through the castle until they arrived at the dressing room she had been in previously where a large tub of warm water had already been drawn for her and clean clothes had been laid out on the table by the door.

"I'll leave you be," said Mirana. "A footman will be stationed outside the door, and he can show you to your room when you're ready. Please, don't hesitate to ask if you need anything."

"Thank you, so much, Mirana."

"Not a problem," she said, smiling. She closed the door and left Lizzie alone in the room.

Lizzie undressed and sank into the water. She felt numb, as though a great slice of her soul had been cut away and had taken her with it. Perhaps she was in shock, she thought. She had hoped, up until the instant he'd left her, that Fred would change his mind. She wondered where he was. Was he still here? Somewhere in the castle? Probably not. He wouldn't want to be confronted by Mirana, who obviously knew something was not right, nor his brother. She closed her eyes and concentrated, wishing desperately her mind could find his across their distance, but there was nothing. She was alone. As she thought of him, the numbness receded, replaced instead by an inconsolable grief for that which he had stolen from her...himself.

* * *

He didn't really know where to go after Marmoreal. He didn't really care. The moment he left, the darkness which had kept itself at bay when he was with Lizzie crawled across his mind, leaving oily black fingerprints across his vision. He stumbled to the first door, with only the barest acknowledgement that the last time he'd gone through, fifteen years ago, his life as 'Drop Dead Fred' had been in the future. It seemed like he'd lived several lifetimes since then. Perhaps he had – for him, it had been decades, though barely any of it as a "real" person. He'd been running then, and in truth he'd been running all his life. He'd run from the castle as a boy to find peace, he'd run from Racie and from his past, he'd run from his vision on the Hill, and in Elphyne he'd run from what he couldn't remember. It was all he knew. He, Freddie, all alone. Once, he hadn't cared. Once upon a time, he'd welcomed the silence with open arms. Now, the silence was deafening, a roaring thunder in his head, and without Lizzie (_my__ Lizzie, whispered his heart_), there was nothing left to stem the madness.

* * *

When Lizzie finished her bath, she dressed and asked the footman to show her to her room. As they neared the the room, a courtier exited the open door.

"My apologies m'lady," he said. "I was asked to deliver some books to your room."

"Oh...okay," she answered, confused. "Thank you..."

The courtier gave her a quick nod and left, resuming his duties.

She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her eye was caught by something that hadn't been there before. On top of her dresser, stacked neatly, were Fred's journals. She went over and picked up the top book, almost not wanting to open it, not wanting to see Fred's writing which was all she had left of him. The journal seemed to weigh twice as much as normal in her shaky hands. She took it and sat on the floor with her back resting against the bed and opened the cover.

"_Land Dwelling Vertebrates_  
_No. 1  
Province of Crims"_

Page after page of creatures filled the volume. She flipped through it absently, not really looking at anything in particular. She leaned back and closed her eyes, her mind replaying their trip back to Marmoreal. If she could only see the doors, she'd try to follow him, but since they were invisible to her, that wasn't even worth thinking about. Her mind visited each place; the Crimson Sea, the field of gowen, the cliffs, the Forest of Queast. It stopped at the last one...she'd almost forgotten the strange object she'd taken from there. She grabbed her pack off the bed and brought it back down to the floor with her. She'd put it in a side pocket to keep it from getting lost. Feeling inside, she pulled out the rings she'd plucked from the strange tree. Now that she had time to examine them, she noticed the intricate patterns on them. They looked almost as though they'd been engraved (though how that could be from something that had grown on a tree she wasn't sure). They were both dark brown, obviously made of wood, but the etchings on them were thin golden veins, twirling around themselves, each in a never ending spiral.

She wondered if the tree was in any of Fred's journals. She picked the one she'd looked through first off the floor and stacked it near the others. Opening the covers of the books, she set each one aside until she came to one entitled:

"_Trees of Underland  
No. 2  
Charms of Prime Deciduous"_

That one sounded encouraging. She noted all the trees in the book seemed to possess some sort of charm or spell. She flipped through the book, page after page, until she found the one she'd been looking for. Under a drawing of the tree itself, sitting on it's grassy knoll, and others of the leaf structure and the concentric rings, Fred had written the following:

_"The Promise Tree  
Est. 340 years old  
__Location: Forest of Queast: .8 miles W of Queast-Sea gate, .4 miles S of Queast-Snud gate.  
__Fruit: Red berries in late spring, .3 inches, inedible  
__Other structures: Male/Female concentric rings, appearing by late summer_

_Male and female rings of the Promise Tree, when exchanged, bind the giver of each to a promise made to the receiver.  
Rings must be used in conjunction with each other."_

The description ended there, which struck Lizzie as odd because all the other specimens had copious explanations and stories sometimes filling several pages. Still, that was more than he'd offered her in Queast. Now she understood why he'd tried to stop her from picking it. "Bind the giver to a promise"...what exactly did that mean?

Her speculations were halted by a knock at her door. She answered to find Raenie, the messenger-girl, smiling brightly at her.

"Welcome back, Lizzie! I'm to tell you that dinner is served. If you would follow me, I'll show you the way."

* * *

Fred lost track of how many doors he passed through. He wandered aimlessly from the Hill to Crims and the Dead Wood, opening doors seemingly at random until he found himself at a door he knew very well. He had exited from Crims into the high-lands of Witzend...to his home. When he'd been teaching in Witzend, he'd built a small cabin in a lee, bounded by the foothills of the Outland Mountains, not 500 feet from the door he'd come from.

Only scorched rubble remained of the meager dwelling. He stepped over the threshold, into what used to be a small living area with a fireplace. The soldiers had done their work thoroughly. Nothing stood, not even the rocks which used to form the chimney. Freddie walked across the foundation, past the remains to the rocky rise beyond. The hills here, like the mountains above them, were pocketed by crags and caves. Freddie only hoped the soldiers had passed on without checking out the surrounding area. He stopped at a huge boulder, nearly as tall as himself. To anyone passing, it would have appeared to be part of the hill itself, but it had taken Freddie all the ingenuity he possessed to haul it there. One edge of the rock lay flush against the native rock while the other side set apart about a foot, the gap filled with smaller rocks. The rocks were still there. Freddie removed them with sweaty hands as he realized that within lay the one part of his life which had lain untouched since he placed these same rocks here, so very long ago.

Weather had not been kind to the cave he slipped into after he'd cleared the entrance. He found the lamp and lit it with the vial of lighting fluid stashed beside it. The light cast eerie shadows over the walls. Roots that he'd once cleared from the ceiling now grew unbounded over the simple shelves and desk he'd placed within. The floor had risen a full two or three inches at least with dried mud brought in by over a decade of spring rains. None of this concerned him. There was only one thing important in here. Shielded from both the roots and mud on the second shelf was a small chest. He removed it and brought it back outside into the light. The key was lost, well not lost per say (it had been on a chain beside his non-existent bed in his non-existent house), so he was obliged to pound at the lock with a rock until it finally broke. He flipped the catches and opened the lid with trembling fingers and removed the folder that lay at the top.

The pictures left in the chest at Marmoreal had been ones that he had drawn while there, except for the pictures of his students which Mirana had asked to see. This chest, this folder, held the only links Freddie had left to his life as it once was. The first drawing was of his parents. His father, Laren, was a hatter by trade like his brother with the complexion to match, ashen from the mercury he used, though his eyes were blue, like Freddie's. Beside him stood his mother, Ellen, her green eyes captivating in her small elfin-shaped face. They had both passed away when he was a teen. His father from mercury poisoning, his mother from no definable illness, save a broken heart. He put the picture aside. The one underneath brought the tears to his eyes. It was his sister, drawn only from memory, but that was all he'd had left when he'd sketched it. A little girl with wispy red curls, blue eyes, and dimples smiled up at him from the page.

"Elsa..."

There were other pictures, ones of Tarrant, Mirana (none of Racie – he'd set fire to those long ago), Chess, of his cabin, places in Underland that were special to him, and a few scraps of verse he'd written here and there. At the bottom were a few trinkets he'd kept and in a small wooden box, his parents wedding rings. There was, of course, nothing in here of the one person his soul longed to see. He put the pictures back in the folder, placed it carefully back in the chest, and latched it. He put the chest back on the shelf in the cave, blew out the lamp, and resealed the entrance.

The light of day was fading now, but Fred didn't have the energy or conviction to build a fire. It would be too cold to stay here, but Southern Witzend was only two doors and less than fifteen minutes away. He headed back to the door, yet as he placed his hand upon the knob, he had a sudden vision of the Red Guardsmen, waiting on him to exit that first door. In his wearied state of mind, he couldn't tell whether it was a vision of the past or of the future, though the Red Guard had been disbanded with the slaying of the Jabberwock two years prior. In the falling darkness of night, he could not bring himself to open the door. He trudged back to the side of the hill, curled up against the rocks for warmth, pulled his cloak about him, and waited for sleep to come and fill the loneliness inside him.

* * *

Lizzie ate supper and then asked the footman if he would show her back to her room. She didn't feel like being social or talking to anyone...she just wanted to go to bed. She blew out her lamp and crawled under the covers. As she lay thinking of everything that had happened, by reflex her hand moved beneath her pillow. There was a piece of paper there. She didn't even need to look at it to know what it would be, but she pulled it out anyway. It was the poem from his journal. She placed back underneath while the sobs she had avoided since he'd left her racked her shoulders and her tears fell unbidden from her eyes.

"Fred," she pleaded into the darkness, "please come back to me..."


	18. A Promise Made

_A/N: Thanks everyone for being so patient! Our family is in the process of moving, so updates may be a little slower for a few weeks. Thank you so much for all the reviews, they are all deeply appreciated!_

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* * *

_

"_I'm out here alone, just trying to get home  
to tell you I was wrong, but you already know.  
Believe me I won't stop at nothing  
to see you, so I've started running._

_All that I'm after is a life full of laughter,  
as long as I'm laughing with you.  
And all that still matters is love ever after,  
after the life we've been through -  
'cause I know there's no life after you."_  
-Chris Daughtry

* * *

Lizzie woke early in the morning, without remembering having fallen asleep. Her hand still clutched the piece of paper beneath her pillow. She got up, feeling unrested and fairly sure she had been crying even in her sleep. Dragging herself from the bed, she went and opened the window, letting the natural light filter into the room. She slipped on her shoes, took the brush from the vanity and tried to untangle her hair. Her eyes glanced momentarily at the mirror above the basin of water, but then stopped and stared. The brush fell from her fingers.

"No...," she whispered. "No...No! NO!..."

She ran to the door and threw it open, looking for anyone. A footman stood outside.

"Please, sir," she said, flustered, "I need to speak to Mirana. It's very important."

"Certainly, m'lady. Please, follow me."

The footman led her through the corridors until they came to the Great Hall. Mirana was talking with a woman Lizzie hadn't seen before, but as they approached she looked up and smiled and excused herself from the conversation.

"Lizzie! Did you sleep well?" she asked. Mirana's eyes narrowed as she observed her distress. "What's wrong? Is there something the matter?"

"It was there," she blurted out. "I _know_ it was there! I saw it when I was here before, and now it's_ gone!_"

Mirana was puzzled. "What's gone? Whatever are you talking about?"

"My reflection...in the mirror! It's gone, just like in my world...it's gone _here_, too, now!

"Your reflection has disappeared? How long ago?"

"I don't know. It was there before, just a few days ago!" Lizzie though back to the last time she'd seen herself. It hadn't been here – it had been in the cavern. She'd seen her reflection in the rock. "No, wait – I saw it in the Crystal Cavern the evening before last!"

The queen was silent a moment. This was highly irregular. "I think I need to know what happened...in your world, Lizzie. Tell me from the beginning, the first time you noticed that something was wrong."

Lizzie told her the story of when she'd woken up in her mother's yard, when no one had been able to see her. She told her how she was able to pass through doors and walls and how Fred had taken her to Elphyne, and how she was invisible there as well. "But everyone could see me _here_! I don't understand..."

"Things sometimes work differently here in Underland," said Mirana. "Not everything is always as it seems. If you've been dreaming, you can still appear to be 'real' here, but if you're fading as your reflection has, that means that wherever your body actually is, something isn't right. You should have woken up in your world before that happened."

"What do you mean "_wherever my body actually is_"?" cried Lizzie. "Where am I? I don't want to go back to my world, I want to stay in Underland!"

Mirana looked at her sadly, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Lizzie, but you're going to have to return. If your body isn't waking, you'll need to go back to it yourself with the blood of the Jabberwock. The next thing that will happen is that _you_ will begin to fade. If you fade completely from here, your body will perish in your world as well. I don't think you'll have more than a few hours, in fact I'm surprised you're still here at all."

Lizzie was overwhelmed. Everything here, was it all a dream? The implications of that were staggering. "Was none of it real?" she whispered, frightened.

Mirana smiled kindly and shook her head. "No, it was real. As I said, things work a bit differently in Underland. Your_ spirit_, your _soul_ is really in Underland, just not your physical body."

Lizzie's face clouded. "But...if I go back...Fred...he'll think I left him! I _swore_ I wouldn't leave him! I need him to know... I need to tell him, but I don't know where he is."

Mirana wondered just what had happened between the two on their journey. She hadn't had a chance to talk to Tarrant since yesterday in detail, only long enough to learn that Freddie was gone again. She herself had no way of finding him, in fact, she only knew of one who did...

"Chess!" Mirana called. "Chess, you're always drifting about, are you here?"

The cat suddenly materialized in the corner of the room. "Well, it's not as if there's anything else going on." he said, lazily. "I don't usually get involved in personal matters...however, I _do_ owe him a favor." He hated being indebted to anyone and he was certain this would at least prove to be interesting. The cat flipped over slowly in mid-air and disappeared before Lizzie had a chance to thank him.

She turned back to Mirana. "If I wake up in my world, how would I get back to Underland?"

"I'll show you. Come, follow me."

Mirana led them down the corridors until they came to a small room, not much larger than a walk-in closet. Inside was a mirror. It was about 6 feet tall, and 3 feet wide, in an ornately crafted gold frame.

Mirana turned to Lizzie. "There are looking-glasses in your world that connect to this one. There are many of them, but they are sometimes hard to find, and are indistinct from normal ones unless you know what to look for." She then addressed the courtier who had followed them in with a lamp to light the room. "Please, bring the lamp over and hold it close to the mirror. Lizzie, come and look and I will show you what a connecting mirror will look like."

Lizzie followed her over. "I don't see anything different."

"Place your face against the glass and look into the mirror."

She did as Mirana directed. Looking sideways into the mirror, she could see what the difference was. There was no reflection. The light did not bounce off the surface, but seemed to light something behind the glass...about an inch inside was the surface of a different mirror. "There's another one inside!"

"Yes, from a mirror in your world, you'll be able to see the surface of this one. When you find one, you won't be able to come straight through, you'll need to concentrate very hard to make it work. It can be difficult for one who has never traveled by mirror before. "

"But what if I can't find one? Can't someone else come through and find _me_?"

"Unfortunately the mirror only works in one direction. As I've said, though, there are many magic mirrors. If you look, you'll find one."

* * *

Freddie didn't think he'd every felt so wretchedly horrible as he did that morning, stiff and sore from the rocks and exhausted from having slept no more than a few minutes between the hours. He stood up, leaning against the rocks and stared at the door that had mocked him last night. He picked up the claymore where he'd laid it yesterday and buckled it about his waist and walked over to the door, drawing the sword before he cautiously opened it. Nothing met him on the other side save a small hedgehog which squealed at him, frightened, and ran away. He shook his head, feeling like an idiot, and sheathed the weapon.

He'd come to a conclusion during the long, dark, sleepless night. First, without Lizzie, he might as well be dead. Second, a sure way to accomplish that was to take out Iracebeth. She was a queen, after all, and exiled or not there would be plenty of those still loyal to her, Stayne included. If he could get close enough to succeed in killing her, he was fairly sure someone would return the favor to him rather quickly. It wouldn't be difficult for him to find her after he'd crossed the Outland Mountains.

He made his way to the second door in Crims, only a fifteen minute walk away. That one took him to Southern Witzend where he had an hour's walk north to Iplam where he found the third door which led over the mountains into Eastern Outland. It had been a long time since he'd been here and he'd not found many doors on his travels. He'd need to be sure where she was first...he had a long walk either way.

He looked into the trees. "Where is she?" he called.

The leaves rattled as though in a breeze. "Whooooo...?" came a whisper.

"You know who I'm looking for! Iracebeth," he spat with loathing, "...where is she?"

"We...do not see...," came the whisper of leaves again. "not...our...concern..."

He raised his voice and played the only trump card he had. "You would protect the one who destroyed the Forest of Crims?" he shouted. "Who poisoned your brethren?"

A great sound of rushing wind filled the forest around him and the trees shook as though a mighty gale buffeted them. Little by little the noise subsided to many whispers which gradually joined as one voice.

"Follow us..." A path of rustling trees appeared above him, leading through the forest.

He followed.

* * *

Chess materialized in Witzend, where Freddie's cabin had once stood. It was the most obvious place to check. He saw the fresh scrapes by the door from his boots and grimaced. He'd missed him. Chess went through the door to Crims. There were two doors very close together here. One led to Witzend further to the south, the other close to the Tulgey Wood. He'd tried to memorize the paths of the doors when Freddie was younger, when Chess would occasionally accompany him. He thought of the two paths he could have taken and which doors they would be close to. The Tulgey Wood door would be useless unless he was merely wandering aimlessly. The Witzend door on the other hand was an hour's walk to an Outland door. He had no doubt which door he had taken, nor why he would have taken such a path. Freddie's claymore had never tasted blood as far as he knew, but he was reasonably sure if he didn't find him quickly, Iracebeth's would stain it today. He bypassed the doors and went straight to the where the last door opened into the Outlands. He would have had to walk from here and Chess could sense him close by.

Chess had never been fond of people in general, but Freddie had been one that he tolerated more than most. Like himself, the boy was a loner – a rare breed amongst Underlandians, though the cat could hardly blame him. Chess spotted him ahead, moving quickly through the forest, following the trees. He disappeared and reappeared behind Freddie.

"And just where might_ you _be going?"

Fred jumped and spun around. "Chess! ...If Tarrant sent you, tell him I've made my choice," he said, "and I don't want to talk about it."

"What you do with your time is your own business, Freddie," said the cat, darkly. "I'm merely here to deliver a message. What you choose to do with it does not concern me."

Fred glared at him, "So...what is it?"

"Lizzie would like you to know that she's not really here and that she must go home. She says she'll try her best to return."

"What do you mean '_she's not really here'_?"

"Apparently something happened to her in her world and she's been asleep all this time. Her reflection disappeared today, and Mirana's ordered her to drink the Jabberwock blood before sundown and wake up."

"Good," said Fred sadly. "She'll have no choice than to be rid of me."

The cat looked perplexed. "You know, I don't like to get involved... but I am curious as to just _what_ is wrong with you."

"I'm crazy Chess, mad..."

"Yes, yes, I know...we're _all _mad here," he interrupted. "If this is about Iracebeth..."

"You don't understand."

"Don't I? There are things I know that_ no one _knows..."

Freddie gave him a long look. "If you know, then you understand. I won't share the demons inside me with Lizzie. She doesn't deserve that."

"You fool!" said the cat. "There's nothing inside your head _now_ that wasn't in there last week. You simply chose to _ignore_ it then because you wanted to be happy."

"What are you saying?" he asked, indignant. "That I don't _want_ to be happy now?"

Chess did not indulge his question with a simple answer. "Do you remember what I told you when you first came through the door in the Tulgey Wood?"

"That seems like a long time ago."

"Sometimes the things we seek are not always what we wish to find, and sometimes we find that which we did not wish to seek."

"Did you know then, Chess? What I would find?"

"I knew that you had found happiness. The question now is what are you _seeking_?" He didn't answer, and the cat continued. "I will tell you, the road you travel on does not lead to peace. Whether you want to listen or not, your brother is right – there is a choice to be made between living or dying. Dying is the easy choice, but slaying Iracebeth will not kill your demons. The only cure for that is time..." Chess paused a moment. "Do you remember, Freddie, what the Forest of Crims used to look like?"

"You mean the _Dead Woods_," Fred said bitterly.

"I want to show you something. Take my paw and see what I can see."

Reluctantly he placed his hand on the cats paw. In an instant, he found himself transported into a vision, flying high over Underland. The entire realm spread out before him in green and gold, except for a huge brown scar upon the land which marked the region once under command of the Red Queen.

The Forest of Crims used to be green and beautiful, like the Tulgey Wood, until the evil of Iracebeth's reign leached into it's very soil, killing all life there. Like the Valley of Iplam, there were only memories left of what it once was. The vision flew closer and closer, skimming over the trees of the Tulgey Wood, over and over, faster and faster, until the woods ended and he was flying over the crossroads which he and Lizzie had passed only a few days before. The trees here were broken, gnarled, and dead. He didn't want to be reminded of this, but the vision pushed on until it was flying over the Dead Wood of Crims. The flight now slowed, until he was barely crawling over the trees. It took him a moment to see what Chess had wanted him to see. In the tallest branches of the tallest trees - dry and twisted for so long...grew tiny green shoots. No longer than his fingertips, new life struggled up from out of the dead. And now that he had noticed it, he could see it everywhere. The Forest of Crims was healing.

"It's _alive,_" he whispered, amazed.

"Yes, Freddie, even Crims and Iplam will live again. Don't you want to be here to see it?"

Fred smiled, but shook his head. "Not without Lizzie."

"Then I suggest you tell her that..."

"Don't let her leave before I get there!"

And then, he ran. For the first time in his life, running_ home_ instead of away. He made it to the first door, threw it open, and disappeared into Iplam. He had to stop there and think about which combination would be the quickest back to Marmoreal - he'd never been in a hurry to get _there_ before. Unfortunately, he hadn't been thinking of ease of return on the way here and he now realized he was probably at the worst place he could possibly be. Any way he went wouldn't get him there quickly. His best bet was going to be to go straight east across the bottom of Iplam until he came to Hightopp Hill and then to the door on the other side which led directly to the first door at Marmoreal. He balked at the distance. It was a six hour walk at least, and it was nearly mid-afternoon...who knew how much time he had.

He threw his pack down and ran through the dry, dead fields of southern Iplam, faster than he'd ever run before. He didn't stop until he reached the edge of the Tulgey Wood where he was forced to slow down or drop from exhaustion. Nearly three hours later, he passed a door, but the wrong one. It would lead him to the Outland Mountains where there wasn't another door anywhere within a day's journey (at least not that he'd found). He started running again and less than an hour later was finally crossing the Hill and down into the valley beyond to the door that was his goal...the door to Lizzie. The closer he came to it, the more worried he became. What if she wouldn't forgive him? She had every right not to. Still, she'd sent Chess to find him... He slid more than ran down the valley, and finally his hand touched the knob of the door. He pulled it open into Marmoreal with only ten more minutes to go to the front gate of the castle.

* * *

Lizzie sat on a bench in the courtyard with Alice and Mirana nearby keeping her company. She'd rather just be alone, but she knew they were only trying to help so she said nothing. In her hand she held a small vial of florescent purple liquid. Her fingers were sweaty around it, and she hadn't looked at it since Mirana had given it to her three hours prior. She'd tried to hold out as long as possible, waiting for some news from Chess that he might have found Fred, but the sun was sinking lower in the sky and Mirana had told her she'd need to drink it before nightfall.

"If you fall asleep again here, it may be too late. You might not be here to wake up at all. It's better to do it sooner than later," she'd said.

She took the blood and held it up, catching the evening sun shining through the glass. She sighed sadly and flipped open the top. She turned to Mirana, willing herself not to cry, and said, "If you find Fred...tell him I didn't want to go..." She put the vial to her lips and...

...a cat appeared in front of her. "Chess!" Lizzie cried. "Did you find him?"

"You might not want to do that, yet," was all he offered before he disappeared.

She didn't notice Mirana look past her to the outer gate and smile, but she heard her say, "Alice, I have some things I'd like to go over with you for tomorrow. Would you be so kind as to accompany me?"

Lizzie looked up to catch Alice's smile and say, "Of course Mirana, I'd be happy to."

"Lizzie, remember, you need to drink that _sooner, _not later," Mirana admonished as she and Alice walked back to the castle, leaving a confused Lizzie alone.

About ten seconds later, she heard the footfalls of someone running down the path of the inner courtyard. She turned around in time to see him round the corner and fall, exhausted, to his knees.

"Fred?" It took her a second to shake off the shock before she jumped up and ran to him, dropping to her own knees before throwing her arms around him. Neither spoke, only clung to each other for what seemed an eternity. Finally, Fred moved back to rest his forehead against Lizzie's, and both looked with tear stained faces at each other.

"_Save me_...," he pleaded.

"Anytime," she whispered, before his lips crashed into hers.

He tasted like tears, reminding her of the Crimson Sea and she pulled him closer, his touch erasing the heartache of the last two days. She forgot where she was, forgot the castle, forgot Underland, forgot the Jabberwock blood, forgot about leaving. There was only him, and his arms, and his kiss, and her love for him, and his for her.

At last, he broke the kiss and stood, helping Lizzie to her feet. She noticed the dark smudges beneath his eyes. He looked as though he hadn't slept in days, and she thought it very likely that he hadn't. His hair was damp with sweat from running. He took her face in his hands, smoothing the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs as he gazed at her.

"Lizzie," he whispered. At the sound of her name from his lips her tears seemed to multiply, though she felt nothing but relief and happiness. "Lizzie..._oh Li._.." He shut his eyes tightly for a moment, loosing the battle against the tears that filled them. He drew a ragged breath, opened his eyes, and tried again, his voice catching on his words, "...I'm so _terribly_ sorry. I'm_ so_ sorry...I _never _wanted to hurt you...you're _everything_ to me, you're my _life_, you're my _world_...and I know...I _know _I don't...deserve for you to forgive me. But I _love_ you...I love you so much and I swear, I _swear._..I'll do_ anything_ to make you happy."

She ran her fingers through his wet hair, smiling up at him. "_You_ make me happy, Fred. You've always made me happy. No matter what else happens or _has_ happened, there's no one else who could _ever _take your place."

He wrapped her tightly in his arms and they stood together, both feeling, for the first time since they left the cavern, whole and complete...and happy. She'd almost forgotten the small vial she'd stashed in her pocket - how unfair could life be to her, that she would have to leave just when he'd come back?

"Fred," she said, anguished, "I have to go. Mirana said if I didn't, I'd die in my world and this one both." She looked at him. "She said there were mirrors...mirrors that lead back here. She showed me how to tell the difference."

He nodded an affirmative. "There are mirrors. There are_ lots_ of mirrors, but they're hard to find."

"What if I can't find one?" she asked with worry.

He stared at her fiercely for a moment before he said, "I'll find a way to get you back, Lizzie, if I have walk every realm between mine and yours."

She shook her head. "Don't leave Underland...give me a chance to find the way back first. I don't want to come back and find_ you've _left to find _me_."

Fred grimaced. Being patient wasn't his strong suit at even the best of times. "You have a month," he said. "A _February_ month - and not leap-year, either...28 days. That's it...that's all I can stand. Any longer than that and I'll assume the Mega-bitch is holding you captive. _Understand_?"

"Understood," she said smiling.

He gave her a quick kiss. "Come on. Chess said you had until sundown. There's somewhere I want you to see. " He took her hand and ran with her back through the courtyard, and into the woods where his door stood. He opened it and pulled her through with him.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Why do always ask me that when you know I won't tell you?" he laughed. "There's another door, not very far..."

A few minutes later, he found it. He turned to her, smiling. "I _assume_ it hasn't changed much in fifteen years. It's on top of a mountain, after all."

Lizzie stepped through with Fred following behind her. They were on top of a mountain, to be sure. All around them, Underland spread out like a huge checkered quilt, sewn in greens and golds in the last rays of the setting sun.

Fred put his arms around her from behind. "You can see forever up here," he whispered.

Lizzie leaned against him. "The sun is setting..." She felt in her pocket for the Jabberwock blood. There was something else in her pocket, too, and she smiled, remembering what it was.

"I have something for you," she said, turning towards him. "so you won't forget me..."

"I hope you're not worried about _that_."

She pulled the rings out of her pocket and held them up.

Fred did a double take. "Where did you get those?" he asked in a low voice.

She looked at him, puzzled. "Don't be silly, you know perfectly well where I got them. I picked them off the tree in Queast after you told me not to." Why was he looking at her so strangely?

"Do you know what they are?" he asked, quietly.

He was making her nervous. Had she missed something here? "Um...they bind the giver to a promise made to the receiver?"

"Who told you _that_?"

"No one told me that," she said defensively, "I looked it up in your journal. What? Have you used them before?"

Fred looked taken-aback and blushed furiously. "Of course not!"

Lizzie was throughly confused. "Okay," she said shaking her head, "I've obviously missed something here. What's the deal with the rings?"

"What did my journal say? It's been awhile."

"There wasn't much...just that they bound the giver to a promise made to the receiver, that they had to be used together, and a bunch of technical stuff about the tree."

A slow grin spread across Fred's face. "Oh...well, that explains things."

"Explains what? Quit being so mysterious and tell me! The sun's going down."

"My journal seems to be a bit...um...incomplete and nebulous."

"You think? ...So, do you want them or not?"

He could tell she was getting frustrated. "That depends," he said, stepping closer to her.

"On what?"

He leaned over and whispered huskily in her ear, "On what you want me to promise you."  
He didn't wait for her answer, but kissed the spot just below her ear softly, moving down the side of her neck, across her collarbone. She groaned softly and wrapped her arms around him. "What do you want from me, Lizzie?" he murmured.

"I want _you_," she said, breathlessly. "_All _of you, _forever_." She felt him smile against her skin.

He pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, and then moved back to look at her. "That's the idea..." His eyes, usually a lighter shade of blue, were as dark as sapphires. "They're _promise rings,_ Lizzie... the promise of a more.._.binding _promise."

Lizzie's addled mind muddled slowly through his words until she grasped the meaning of them. "Oh!" Her heart began to race as she finally understood what she'd offered him and found herself at quite a loss at to what to say.

He put his cheek lightly against hers and ran his hands down her arms until they found Lizzie's, intertwining his fingers with hers and whispered, "The question isn't whether _I _want them..." He paused, bringing their hands in between them. Locking his eyes on hers, he knelt before her and said, "The question is do _you_ want them...and _me_...forever?"

"Are you serious?" she asked, skeptically.

He scowled at her. "What in the world could possibly make you think I'm not serious?" he asked, irritated.

"Sorry, old habits die hard, I suppose." She pressed her lips together, unsuccessfully trying to hide her grin, and he realized she was teasing him.

He stood up and grabbed her by the waist, swinging her around. "Who taught you all these nasty habits?"

She put her arms around his neck and smiled at him, "Well, you see...I used to have this imaginary friend with crazy red hair and strange green clothes..."

"Whoever could you be talking about?" He closed the distance between them, his lips touching hers as he spoke. "Marry me, Snot-face."

She barely had time to say "Okay," before he kissed her.

* * *

"Here," he said, holding out his hand, "give me the rings."

She handed them to him and he held the smaller one between his fingers. "Take the larger one...hold it tight." He pulled quickly and the rings parted with a small snap. He took her left hand in his. "You have to make a promise for them to work." He slid the smaller ring onto her ring finger, though it was much too large to fit properly. He looked into her eyes and said. "I promise, I'll _never_ leave you again."

She gasped as the ring suddenly shrank until it fit perfectly around her finger. She mimicked what Fred had done and took his left hand in hers. Placing the ring on his ring finger, she said, "I promise, I'll come back to you." As hers had done, the larger ring shrank until it fit.

And then, two even more unexpected things happened.

First, Lizzie became aware of a wave of emotion that gently washed over her, subtle and not her own. Like one blind since birth and suddenly seeing, she found it impossible to describe other than in what she had ever known – in taste, and smell, and feel, and color. As at a loss as she was to define it, it was distinctly Fred...and _Freddie_. The two halves of himself that her mind had separated into neatly confined compartments now merged and mingled with each other until one man stood before her, and she _felt _him in her mind. The second unexpected thing was that Lizzie could now clearly see the door they'd come through, standing at the edge of the summit.

Fred, for his part, felt his connection with Lizzie intensify until it was as strong and clear as it had ever been when she'd been his charge. Her determination and courage flowed through him, banishing the still lurking darkness from every corner of his mind.

He looked at her. "_Lizzie..._" he thought.

"I heard that!" she said. In her mind, she asked, _"Can you hear me?_"

"_Yes, I can hear you."_

"Wow," she said. "That's pretty bizarre." No sooner had she said it than she felt something...wrong. Her vision turned to black. _"Fred..."_

He caught her as she fell, even as he could feel her slipping away. He realized belatedly that Time must have stood still for them while they'd been up here. The sun was no lower in the sky than when they'd arrived, yet it should be fully dark by now. He searched her frantically for the Jabberwock blood she'd had in her hand. He found it in her pocket and drew her head into his lap. She'd already started to fade, her skin was deathly pale and nearly translucent. Flipping the cap open, he poured the vile liquid into her mouth.

"Lizzie, wish to wake up!" He saw her swallow reflexively, but there was no sign that she heard him. "Lizzie, wake up! You have to wish it, listen to me...," and he concentrated as hard as he could, inching his way across time and space until he touched her mind. _"Lizzie,"_ he whispered, _ "wish to wake up..."_

His voice ceased her panic and she listened to it as he whispered to her. "_I wish to wake up..."_ was her last conscious thought – until she did.

* * *

_A/N: It's so much easier to write Fred/Lizzie than each of them apart!_

_A bit of Trivia - I made Freddie's Map of Underland before I ever started writing Chapters 17 and 18. I basically just started drawing doors in and connecting them. Instead of changing it, I used it as a basis for this chapter. When I had to have Freddie leave Iplam to get to Marmoreal, I looked at the map and realized I'd put him into the worst possible place. He balked at the distance...so did I, lol._

_Part 3 of the story starts next chapter!_


	19. Far, Far Away

_A/N: I've put the conversations that Lizzie and Fred have between each other in their minds in brackets to make it easier to see._

_Also, the timing may seem a little 'off' with Lizzie sleeping and waking while Fred has one conversation, but remember time passes faster in her world than his. Actually, time in Underland is kind of erratic. In the books, Time is sort of a 'being' who can decide to slow down or speed up. (Or not talk to someone entirely, like with the Mad Hatter)._

* * *

"_I know you're out there somewhere...  
Somewhere you can hear my voice.  
I know I'll find you somehow...  
And somehow I'll return again to you."_

-The Moody Blues

* * *

She was between time and space. A nowhere land in a nowhere place. There was no color, no sound, no light, and no dark. Around her was a uniform grayness and she was one with it. She knew nothing, there was nothing know, there was just...nothing. Gradually she became aware of a tingling sensation (like breathing nitrous oxide at the dentist's office, she would remember later). Then came a faint sound, a soft, meaningless "click -whirrr... ...click -whirrr". She floated there, timeless, merely existing.

_["Lizzie..." ] _The word cut through the grayness, as loud and clear as though someone was standing beside her. Lizzie - it sounded like a word she might know...

[_"Lizzie, are you okay?"] _And that voice. She _knew_ that voice. It sounded worried. She thought it might have been saying something earlier, before, from out of the nothingness, but she couldn't be sure.

It spoke again - that nameless, formless being. [_"Lizzie..."_ ] That was her. She was sure of it. The voice was calling her. Little by little, her awareness of herself returned, though the grayness continued.

[_"Snot-face...Wake up!"] _

_["Fred?"]_ She felt relief flood through him.

_["Don't scare me like that!"]_

_["I can't see anything. Everything's gray"]_

_["Open your eyes..."]_

She had to think of how to work her eyes. Her brain felt scrambled, like everything had been moved and re-circuited. Finally a slit of light appeared at the bottom of the grayness, then little by little it grew until she found herself staring into a pair of blue eyes. The wrong color of blue. It wasn't Fred staring down at her, it was Mickey.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty!"

She groaned and closed her eyes again. There was no gray nothingness this time, merely the darkness of closed eyes. Her heart skipped a beat.

_["Fred?"]_

_["I'm still here."]_

A brilliant smile lit her face and she reopened her eyes. Mickey, oblivious to her internal conversation, smiled back.

"Hey," he said, "you must have had sweet dreams to look that happy."

"I did," she tried to say, but her throat felt like someone had shoved a cotton ball down it, and all that came out was a inarticulate whisper.

"Don't try to talk, they just took the tube thingy out."

The 'tube thingy'? Oh, this was bad, she thought. Her other senses continued to wake up - slowly, as though someone had pushed a reset switch. The sterile smell of what could only be a hospital now found it's way to her brain. She tried to sit up.

"Whoa!" Mickey said, putting his hand gently against her shoulder, holding her back down. "I don't think that's a good idea, either."

She tried to speak again, slowly, consciously, forming each sound as she whispered. "What's wrong with me?"

Mickey glanced quickly at the door before answering her as if expecting someone to walk in, "You were in a pretty bad accident. A truck ran the stop sign while you were turning out of the park. You ended up with a broken arm and a pretty bad bump on the head. Actually, it was a _really_ bad bump on the head," he said. "I can't say as much for your car, it's pretty much toast. Natalie had already run ahead of me to the house, so luckily she missed seeing it." Mickey paused a moment, remembering. "They had to cut up the car to get you out," he added, quietly.

Lizzie took a closer look at him. He looked ten years older than she remembered him. There were dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn't slept in a while. She tried to calculate how many nights she'd been 'gone'. One night at her mom's house, one at her apartment, one night in Elphyne, then Marmoreal, the Tulgey Woods, two nights at the cave near the cavern, one at the cavern, one at the Crimson Sea, one in Marmoreal. She'd been gone, at least in spirit, for ten nights – but time didn't move the same here as there.

"How...long?" she whispered.

"Two weeks tomorrow. You had a lot of swelling...in your brain. They kept you in a coma until it went down," he said. "They took you off the meds yesterday, but they told us it might be a while before you woke up, so everyone went home to try and get some sleep."

"You should be sleeping, too."

He looked away from her. "I wasn't tired."

"Uh-huh."

"Speaking of tired, you should get some rest. Is there anything I can get you?"

Her eyes really were feeling very heavy. She fell asleep without even answering him and missed the kiss he pressed to her forehead.

* * *

Fred felt their connection fade as she fell asleep. He'd stayed on the mountain until she'd finally answered him, and he knew she'd woken in her world. Now he slowly made his way back to Marmoreal by moonlight, surprised at how easy it still was after all the years he'd been gone. It was late when he arrived, and he slipped back into the castle and up to his room without meeting anyone other than the footman waiting for him outside his door. He sighed as he greeted the fish and shut the door behind him. Nothing ever seemed to escape notice here. He was sure to be dragged in to see Mirana tomorrow to 'tell her all about it'. Somehow it had always been the same with the two of them – him having all the adventures, and her wanting to hear about them instead of doing any real 'living'. He eyed the bed longingly, tired of sleeping on rocks. He chucked his clothes in a corner and crawled under the covers. For once in his life he actually felt at peace. The ring felt strange on his finger, and he spun it around absently with his other hand. He smiled into the dark – she was _his _(or would be soon, at least) - bound to him forever. _His_...he fell asleep.

* * *

The next time Lizzie woke, there was a crowd in her room. A nurse was checking something with the IV drip next to the bed, and a doctor scribbling something on a chart. Her mother loomed over her, scowling darkly at the nurse whom she considered to be in her way. Mickey sat in a chair by the door.

_["Great...now the fun starts."] _she thought to Fred. He was sleepy, she wondered if she had woken him.

_["Where are you?"]_

_["I'm in the hospital. I guess I was in a wreck. Don't worry -" _she said hastily as she felt him panic, _"I think I'm okay, just a broken arm."] _She decided against telling him about the coma, he was worried enough now, anyway.

_["You sure?"]_

_["Yes, I think so, just really tired."]_

_["Is the Mega-beast there?"]_

_["Yes."]_

_["Who else?"]_

He would ask that. [_"A nurse, a doctor, my mother, Mickey."] _She felt his stab of jealousy at the last name. She was surprised Mickey was still there - he wasn't the biggest fan of her mother, either.

_["What's Fart-pants doing there?"]_

_["I don't know, don't worry about it."]_

_["I don't trust him."] _She could tell he wasn't going to drop it anytime soon.

_["I love you, quit being jealous."] _

Lizzie's voice in his mind was silent then, leaving Fred to consider her situation. Her mother, the original Mega-beast herself, of course would try and drag Lizzie back under her wing. He wouldn't be a bit surprised if the old witch had already moved Lizzie's things back into her old room from her apartment. Wouldn't be surprised at all.

Fart-pants being there was another thing altogether, and he cringed to think that was partially his fault. By helping her see how horrible Charles was and convincing her to leave him, he'd inadvertently steered her to a guy who he knew for a fact was crazy about her. At the time, it had seemed like a magnanimous thing to do, but things had changed considerably since then...at least between him and Lizzie. He seriously doubted anything had changed as far as Fart-pants was concerned, though. That sissy had better just keep his hands off of Lizzie.

* * *

The doctor put down the chart and smiled kindly at her. "Hello Elizabeth, I'm Dr. Young. You gave us quite a scare when you came in. How are you feeling?"

Lizzie hadn't had much waking time to check out her physical condition. Nothing hurt, but the slight buzzing in her head tipped her off that she was probably on some sort of painkillers. She shrugged her shoulders at the doctor. "Okay, I guess." her voice was a little louder than the whisper she'd spoken to Mickey in earlier. She wondered how long she'd slept.

"Well, you'll be wanting to take it easy for a while," said the doctor. "Your MRI showed no permanent effects of the swelling in your brain, but your muscles are going to be weak after having been in bed for so long. It will probably be a few days before you're up an around. I think your mother has made arrangements for you." He looked over at Polly Cronin.

She smiled patronizingly, "Yes, I've already taken care of that. I'm sure she'll be feeling better in no time."

"Good, good. Well then, if you have any questions, I've left my office number with you," he said, addressing her mother instead of her. He turned back to Lizzie. "It's good to see you awake, young lady. I'll be checking on you again tomorrow."

"Thank you, doctor," said her mother.

What was she – twelve, thought Lizzie? It was already starting, and she could just bet that she was going to end up living with her mother while she was recovering. At least she had an incentive for getting better. She didn't plan on being around that long if she had anything to say about it.

Her mother leaned over and eyed her critically as though deciding which flaw she should point out first. "I hope you can appreciate how much trouble you've caused," she said.

Lizzie fought the urge to roll her eyes. The words 'piss off' came to mind, but she decided it was probably best for now to just remain silent.

"Well," her mother continued, "I suppose there's no sense talking about it now. I've had your things moved over from your apartment and gave your thirty day notice last week, so we'll be all set when they release you here."

"Yes, mother," Lizzie whispered, automatically.

* * *

These strange conversations over space and time were pretty amazing, but Fred kept feeling like he was 'on hold' while Lizzie talked with other people. Apparently unless one of them addressed the other specifically, there was nothing to hear. He could feel what she was feeling though, leaving him wonder what was happening right now. She was angry, and from her years as his charge he was able to discern _this _anger from all others. Her mother was pissing her off.

_["What's going on?"] _he asked.

_["Mommy Dearest has apparently made arrangements for me,"] _she replied.

_["Don't worry, you won't be there long."]_

_["I don't plan on it."] _A wave of fatigue suddenly engulfed her and she yawned.

_["You're tired, you need to sleep."]_

_["Yeah...love you."]_

_["I love you, too."]_

* * *

There was a knock on his door. He hoped it wasn't Tarrant, although he supposed he was going to have to talk to him eventually...and apologize, he thought with a groan. He got out of bed and threw his clothes on before opening the door. It was a courtier and Fred breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but Mirana requests the honor of your presence."

"Of course she does," he said, rolling his eyes. "Tell her I'll meet her in the kitchen and that she doesn't want to see me before I've cleaned up."

The courtier looked at him strangely, unaccustomed to people sending him back with their own orders for the queen. "Um..."

"Trust me," said Fred. "She'll understand. Just tell her, please."

"Certainly, sir."

The courier turned and left and Fred shut the door. He rummaged in the drawers until he found a clean change of clothes and dunked his head in the basin of water. The resources in his room were a bit limited, but they'd have to do. When he was reasonably sure he didn't look and smell as though he'd run all the way from Iplam, he dressed and left to find Mirana.

* * *

Lizzie opened her eyes to find that she was all alone. She sighed with relief, now maybe she could check and see what the damage to herself was without someone hovering over her. She tried to sit up and found she could only get about halfway on her own power. She grabbed the railing of the bed with her right hand as tightly as she could and slowly managed to work her way until she was sitting fully upright. Her head swam sickeningly, and blackness crept around the edges of her vision. She sat unmoving for several minutes until the spinning slowly subsided to a slow whirl and she felt as though she at least had a fighting chance of not passing out. Her legs felt like they weighed a ton each and her muscles that moved them like gelatin. Slowly she managed to pull them out of their resting position and swing them around over the edge of the bed so that she was sitting on the edge, holding on to the railing. Her left arm was useless in a cast that stretched from nearly the end of her fingers to past her elbow. There was a metal tray on the table beside the bed and she figured it was the closest thing to a mirror she was going to find right now. She could just barely reach the corner of it with her right hand, but not close enough to grab it. She lay back down on her left side and tried to reach it again. This time she succeeded. Her energy for trying to sit up again was gone so she fumbled with the buttons on the bed until she found the one that raised the head. She looked into the shiny metal of the tray.

"Crap," she whispered, softly. She barely recognized the face that stared back at her. Both her eyes were yellowish black and puffy, the left side noticeably worse than the right. Various other scrapes and scratches adorned her forehead, cheeks, and neck, and her skin was a pallid, sickly hue. The most striking difference though was how gaunt she looked. She wondered how much weight she'd lost being fed presumably through a tube for nearly two weeks. It had to be more than a few pounds. She reached to place the tray back on the table, but missed, and she cringed as it crashed to the floor with a loud 'bang'. She was so tired from her physical exertion it was all she could do to pull her legs back under the covers before she fell asleep again.

* * *

Mirana waited in the kitchen. Impatiently. She flitted here and there, checking a potion that didn't need checking, smelling the soup...again. She took a seat at the breakfast table and tapped her nails on the surface, well aware her behavior was far removed from the normal calm and aloof demeanor she usually displayed. But, darn it, this was _Freddie_. He told the best stories, and she _knew_ this was going to be a good one. Finally he walked into the kitchen. He rolled his eyes when he saw her, but he couldn't hide the smug grin that lit his face. In fact, Mirana was hard pressed to think of a time she'd ever seen him happier.

"Sit and spill it." There were no pretenses between the two of them, they'd known each other far too long for that. He turned one of the chairs around the other way and sat down, his arms folded on the backrest. Her eyes flicked to the promise ring on his finger, and she smiled at him. "Congratulations."

"And without any of your meddling, Miri," he teased. "Imagine that."

She waved her finger at him. "Ah, ah, ah...I believe it was I who sent you on that journey to the other side of Underland."

He frowned, realizing she had a point. "It would have happened anyway."

"Right," she said, unconvinced. "Start at the beginning...I'm listening."

He ignored her. "You know, you really should have your own adventures. What ever happened to that one guy...you know, the one from Snud?"

Mirana blushed. "It's not appropriate for commoners to court the queen."

"I was under the impression there was a lot more than 'courting' going on," he said, slyly, "but then again, I've been gone awhile."

"That's enough about me," she said cutting off that thread of discussion. "You're here to tell me about _you. _I can make it an order if you'd rather."

He laughed. "Alright, alright. Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear, or do you want to hear what I want to tell you?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I think the first one."

* * *

The light streaming through the window of the room woke Lizzie. She tried to remember if it had been day or night the last time she had been awake but found she had no idea. Her sleep was so random and dreamless she could have easily been asleep for ten minutes or ten hours. She was starving by the time a nurse came by and brought her breakfast. After eating, she felt much better and found she had enough energy to sit up on the side of the bed without much trouble at all. There was no spinning and blackness this time. Her mother came in at a little past ten o'clock and informed her that the doctor had said that she was free to go home whenever she wanted. Lizzie only wished that were true, but home was Underland and Fred – not her mother's house.

* * *

"That doesn't sound like the whole story," grumbled Mirana. "You've left out all the good parts."

"What good parts are you looking for?" Fred asked, feigning ignorance.

"You know," she pressed, "the 'happily-ever-after' parts."

He grinned. "I'm a guy, Mirana, I don't talk about stuff like that. You can ask Lizzie when she gets back," he said as he stood up from the table. "Speaking of which...where's Nivens? I'm not waiting around a month to see if she finds a mirror. I'll go get her myself through the rabbit hole."

Mirana looked away, and Fred sensed her wanting to change the subject.

"What's wrong?" he asked, suddenly serious.

She looked back at him. "The rabbit hole isn't there anymore, Freddie," she said, quietly. "After Alice came through the last time, someone filled it in from the top."

"So dig it out!"

"That's a lot of digging!"

"Okay... so how else am I supposed to get up there? What about the Jabberwock blood?"

"You're not. There's no other way. The blood would only take you there in spirit, you'd be useless to her."

"What if she can't find her way back?"

"I'm sorry, Freddie," she said, gently. "you'll just have to wait."

"That's not acceptable!" he said and stormed out the door.

* * *

Lizzie leaned her forehead against the window of passenger's seat as her mother drove them to her house. As the car zoomed past sidewalks and roads, she found herself longing instead for the rocky trails, fields, and forests of Underland. Rain began to spatter softly against the glass, and she watched the drops as they were swept across by the wind, dancing past her out of her sight. Suddenly a wave of anger washed over her.

_["What's wrong?"] _she asked Fred.

_["Nothing,"]_ he replied.

Though their link, Lizzie now finally understood how Fred could always tell when she was lying. It was as clear as night and day that there was something upsetting him. _[Don't lie to me, you're angry. What's wrong?]_

There was a pause. _[I was hoping to come and get you, but someone filled the damn rabbit hole in. Sorry.]_

_[Don't worry, I'll find a way back. ]_

_[I'd like to have a back-up plan.]_

_[How bad is the rabbit hole?]_

_[I don't know, I'm on my way to check it out now.]_

Lizzie sighed, and her mother looked over at her.

"I want you straight upstairs when we get home, Elizabeth. The doctor said to take it slowly so that's exactly what we're going to do."

"Yes, mother," said Lizzie with as much patience and long-suffering as she could muster.

She had to lean on her mother for support as she slowly made her way from the car to the front door. It made for an awkward moment since Polly Cronin had never been the touchy-feely type of parent. Lizzie's palms grew sweaty as she approached the imposing red door of the place she considered more an immaculate prison than a home. Her mother helped her up the stairs and as they turned the corner into her old pink room, Lizzie's heart raced as she saw the window. _Oh, God help her_, her mother had seriously gone crazy! Visions of Stephen King's "Misery" flashed through her head as she took in the window she'd smashed to escape with Fred a few months earlier.

There were bars on the widow now.


	20. Lizzie's Story

_A/N: I need some feedback here, come on - throw me a bone, please? No reviews for 3 chapters? You guys** do **want to know how it ends, don't you? Pretty please with a cherry on top?_

_Anyway...When I rewatched DDF, I realized I'd been assuming for some reason that Mickey still lived next door. I'm not going back and changing it, so for the purposes of this story, we'll just assume he does. Um, okey dokey?_

* * *

"_Across the wide and open sky,  
thousands of miles I'd fly  
To be with you -  
I'll be there_

_Don't be afraid, oh my love  
I'll be watching you from above.  
And I'd give all the world tonight,  
to be with you..._

_Just think of me, and I'll be there._"

-Escape Club

* * *

The rabbit hole was at the top of the Room of Doors. The Room of Doors was in Eastern Crims, not that far by door, but the short way involved traveling through a one Freddie hadn't used since he was seventeen. _That_ door – the door from Marmoreal to the wheat field of Queast. Only for Lizzie would he use it again as he did now. He told himself he wasn't even going to think about it, but as soon as he entered the field of wheat, he couldn't help himself from running as fast as he possibly could to the next door. Luckily it was less than a mile away for an irrational feeling of being chased by all the demons that had ever haunted him swept over him as he ran. The second door at Queast took him just north of the room, and he turned and went south until he saw the stairs leading to the tiny door at their top. This door was much too small for him without pishsalver, but there was another in a tree at the bottom of the stairway which led into the room as well. A wall of packed earth greeted him when he opened it. He couldn't even fathom how much dirt it must have taken to fill in that hole. The one time he'd been to the surface it had seemed to take an eternity to fall back down it.

_["Lizzie, how much time has passed there?"]_

_["I don't know, I was sleeping a lot the first day. I talked to you this morning and it's almost dark now."]_

He thought a moment._ ["Okay. It's been about four hours here, so time is definitely moving faster for you." ]_

_["How bad is the hole?"]_

He sighed. _ ["Bad. I'll have to think about what to do."]_

* * *

The clock by her bed claimed it was 3:45 am, but she'd done so much sleeping over the last two days, it might as well have been noon. The rain continued to fall harder and harder, beating against the window of her room as she lay in the dark. It reminded her of the Tulgey Wood, of the tree they'd sheltered in that first night. Her memory was full of the smells and sounds of the forest, of the way the drops of rain had sounded as they drummed on the leaves, of the warmth of Fred's arms around her as they sat together. She got up out of bed and walked stiffly over to the window, placing her forehead against the cool glass. How different her life was now than it had been two short weeks ago! In truth, she hadn't felt she had a purpose then. Now she had more purpose than she'd ever dreamed of. And this time she would fight, for herself and for him, no matter what anyone said, no matter who thought she was crazy. She reached out and touched his mind. It was peaceful, sleeping. She left the window and crawled back into bed, wishing she was another world away.

* * *

Three days passed with nothing to show for them except for Lizzie now being completely stir crazy from having spent nearly every waking hour with her mother, and Fred no closer to finding a way to her himself. She felt nearly back to her old self now and if she didn't get out of her mom's house soon, she was going to go nuts. Apparently Lizzie was getting back to normal far too quickly for her mother's tastes. Sometimes she thought her mother would rather _like_ her be an invalid so she could lock her away for the rest of her life in her little pink bedroom and visit occasionally – like some pet in a gilded cage.

The doorbell rang. "I'll get it," called Lizzie. She opened the door to find Mickey beaming at her.

"You look like you feel better," he said.

"I do." She stepped outside and shut the door behind her. "Hey, could you do me a huge favor?"

"Sure, what do you need?" He practically dripped enthusiasm.

Lizzie wished he'd tone it down a little, why did he always remind her of a little puppy always wanting to play fetch when she talked to him? She felt badly for occasionally using it to her advantage, and today was one of those days.

"Mickey, would you mind helping me run a few errands? I don't seem to have a car at the moment."

Mickey jumped at the chance of spending a day with her. "Sure, not a problem! I don't go into work until six anyway."

"Thank you so much, really, you're a lifesaver. I'm gonna go crazy if I don't get out of here. Just let me tell my mom so she won't think I've escaped," she said, rolling her eyes.

She went back inside and found her mom reading something at the kitchen table.

"Hey," said Lizzie, "Mickey's going to take me to run some errands."

Her mother looked up quizzically at her. "What errands could you possibly have to run?"

"I just want to get outside a little – it's been awhile." Wasn't she nearly thirty? Lizzie was slightly disgusted with herself that she seemed to be asking her mother's permission to leave the house, but that was just how it was. She'd learned the rules to the game of surviving her mother when she was just a child. One of those rules was to make her feel like she was in charge. It was better than the alternative of fighting a battle Lizzie had no hope to win. Keeping the peace – that was always the name of the game. One of the (many) strange things about her mother was that leaving the house seemed to be taboo, unless you were out of absolutely everything.

"Well, you have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, we'll be going out then."

Lizzie scrambled for a better excuse. "I wanted to go by and check on my apartment anyway. I'll probably need to sign something."

"Well...I guess, but make sure you're back by supper-time."

"Yes, mother." She grabbed her purse and went out the door before her mother had anything else to say about it. She breathed a sigh of relief as the door thunked shut behind her.

"The Dungeon-Master let you out, huh?" asked Mickey.

"I'll be glad to never see that woman again," she answered, missing Mickey's confused look at her statement. They climbed into his truck and headed down the street.

"Oh, you never said – where are we going?"

"Do you mind stopping at a couple of antique stores? There's something I want to look for."

"Um...okay. What are you looking for?"

"A really old mirror," she answered. This wasn't really a conversation she wanted to be having. He was just going to think she was nuts. "Sorry, I know that sounds weird, but I have an idea stuck in my head, and I just want to check it out."

"That's fine with me," he said, nonchalantly. "I'm sure whatever's stuck in your head is interesting."

_You have no idea, _thought Lizzie. "I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but thanks for the lift," she said, smiling. She felt Fred wake and closed her eyes, concentrating on him.

_["Good morning, sleepy head,"]_ she thought to him.

There was a pause before he answered. _["Morning to you, too – or whatever it is there."]_

_["Did you have good dreams?"]_

_["They'd be better if they were real. You know, I'd rather wake up with you in my bed than in my brain."]_

She blushed. _["I'll be there before you know it."]_

_["Where?"]_ he teased. _["Underland or my bed?"]_

_["Didn't you ask me to marry you? I thought that was part of the bargain."] _

He grinned._ ["I should hope so. Maybe I'll just go back to sleep and dream about it some more."]_

_["You're awful,"] _she scolded. _ ["I don't know what I'm supposed to do with you."]_

_["I can offer some suggestions if you'd like."]_

_["I don't think now is the best time for that."]_

_["Why, whatcha doin'?"]_

_["Going to look for mirrors."]_

_["Alone?"]_ He knew that would be a 'no'.

_["No, I had to bum a ride from Mickey."]_

Of course it would be him_. ["Come on, Lizzie, not Fart-pants!]_

_["I'm a little limited in the friend category, Freddie, sorry."]_

_["Just be careful."]_

Mickey watched Lizzie's unusual behavior out of the corner of his eye as he drove. Her eyes were closed, but her cheeks were stained with a blush that had gotten progressively redder and he couldn't even begin to imagine what she was grinning like that for. He frowned, remembering some of the crazy things she'd said before they'd finally put her into a coma to relieve the swelling in her brain – the same crazy things she'd been saying the night before she'd woken up when he'd sat in her room alone, listening to her mumble. He pulled the truck up at a large antique store. "Hey," he said, "how's this one?"

She startled, as though she'd been in another world altogether. "This is great, thanks Mickey." To Fred she thought,_ ["I don't know what you're so worried about, Mickey's harmless."]_

_["Yeah, right. A harmless milksop who'd just love to take my place."]_

Lizzie and Mickey left the truck and went into the store. She'd stashed a small penlight in her purse to shine on the mirrors and she took it out, starting down the first aisle looking for any mirrors that seemed old enough to be promising. _ ["Fred, no one could ever take your place, least of all Mickey. We're here, gotta go."]_

_["Don't have fun,"] he grumbled._

There were several old mirrors against the far wall and Lizzie walked over to them. She took the penlight and shined it against the first, looking sideways into the mirror as Mirana had shown her. Nothing, just a plain mirror. The light merely reflected off the glass. She repeated it with the other three. They were all normal mirrors. She'd been so busy with the mirrors, she'd nearly forgotten Mickey who was watching her with the most peculiar expression.

"Sorry, I know, I probably look like I'm crazy," she said, trying to think of some explanation that didn't sound like she was. "I heard about these really old mirrors one time that were made out of different materials than normal ones. If you shine a light on them, it looks like there's another mirror inside of it. It just sounded really cool."

"Hey, I don't have a problem with you wanting a creepy old mirror. Is there something I can do to help?"

"Um...well, you have to shine a light on it and I only have the one penlight."

"I have a flashlight in my truck! I'll go and get it." He zipped off out the door.

_["Fred, what am I supposed to tell people if they want to know why I'm acting weird about the mirrors and stuff?"]_

_["Tell them to 'piss-off'."]_

_["I'm serious."]_

_["So am I, it's none of their business."]_

Lizzie sighed as Mickey bounded back in with his flashlight. She showed him what to look for, and she had to admit that him helping did make it easier. Three antique stores and four hours later, she was still out of luck, though.

"Hey, Lizzie," said Mickey, "it's been a really swell, albeit odd day, but I'm going to have to go home and get ready for work."

"Oh, sure Mickey, no problem. Thanks for putting up with my crazy ideas."

"Anytime, really - I love your crazy ideas."

Lizzie didn't know exactly how to take that so she just smiled at him and walked back out to his truck. He drove back to her mother's house, prattling on about this and that with Lizzie only paying the barest of attention to what he was saying - just enough to insert "Uh-huh" and "Oh, really?" at the right places. Looking around for mirrors with Mickey just wouldn't work, she could tell by the way he looked at her occasionally that he thought she was skirting on the edge of insanity. She wondered about taking the bus and what kind of excuse she should use tomorrow. Wait...tomorrow she had a doctor's appointment, and there was no way she was taking her mom looking for mirrors – she was already looking for an reason to call her crazy. Ugh, what a lot of bother! She wished Fred _could_ come and get her. She'd just love to see the expressions on everyone's faces when they found out he was real.

"Hey, we're here," said Mickey. "Though I'm not sure where you've been..."

"Sorry," she said, "I just have a lot on my mind. Thanks for the ride, Mickey, I really appreciate it." She opened the truck door.

"No problem," he said. "Maybe we could go do something together this weekend. Without shopping for mirrors."

_Ah crap, don't ask me out,_ she thought (taking care to _not_ think it to Fred). "I don't know," was all she said as she shut the door of the truck and made her way up to the front steps.

Mickey watched her until she disappeared, then parked the truck in his driveway.

Lizzie felt like she needed to lay down and take a nap. She was feeling stronger everyday, but today had taken everything out of her. She went up to her room and closed the door. The clock said a little after 4:00pm. She kicked off her shoes, crawled under the covers, and was asleep before she felt her head hit the pillow.

The phone ringing woke her up. She let her mother answer it, but a minute later heard a knock on her door.

"Elizabeth, you have a phone call."

Who on earth would be calling her, she wondered? The clock said 5:42pm, she'd slept for quite a while. She got out of bed and picked up the receiver in her room.

"Okay, I've got it," she called, mindful to wait for the 'click' of the other line hanging up before talking. "Hello?"

"Lizzie? Hey, it's Mickey. I'm sorry to bother you."

"That's okay, what's wrong?"

"Well, my babysitter bailed on me, and I've got to be at work in twenty minutes. Would you mind possibly watching Natalie? It's a short night tonight, I'd be back a little after ten."

Lizzie hadn't seen Natalie for a long time, and she jumped at the chance to get away from her mother's house. "Sure, no problem. Just let me get ready, and I'll be over there in a minute."

"I can't tell you how awesome you are, Lizzie. I'll see you in a minute then."

She threw on a different dress, missing the pretty dresses that she'd worn in Underland, though she didn't want to dress up for Mickey and risk having him gawk at her. Had she realized that was what she'd done in Underland? Before she knew how Fred felt about her? She had _wanted _Fred to notice her, whether or not she understood that's what she'd been doing at the time. She most definitely did _not_ want Mickey to notice her. She brushed her hair – short again now. The potion that had given her long hair apparently didn't transfer to her real body, which made her wonder why she still had her link with Fred through the rings. Try as she might, she couldn't squeeze her finger far enough underneath the cast on her left hand to feel for a ring there. Perhaps some charms were powerful enough to stay in both worlds.

She left her mother's house and walked across the yard to Mickey's. He opened the door before she had a chance to ring the doorbell.

"Hey," he said, hurriedly. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, Lizzie. I'll be back in a few hours."

"No problem," she said, smiling. "You'd better go, though, before you're late."

"Yep! See ya' later!" He ran to his truck and hopped in. Lizzie went inside before he got to the end of the driveway.

"Lizzie!" cried Natalie. "You came! You came!" The little girl ran up and threw her arms around Lizzie's legs in a tight hug.

"Hey Natalie!" she said, kneeling down to the girl's height. "What have you been up to? Sorry I haven't been around in a while."

"That's okay. Are you feeling better now?"

"Yes," she said, "much better. So...what are we doing for fun tonight?"

"Have you ever made pants pie?"

Lizzie laughed, remembering. "Yes, I have – but I think we need to think of something a little less messy tonight."

* * *

After they had finished supper, and had exhausted every hiding place for hide and seek, it was time for Natalie to get ready for bed.

"Tell me a story, Lizzie!" she said as Lizzie tucked her in.

"I don't know, I'm not really good at stories," she said. "How about a book instead?"

"_Please?_" she begged. "I really want a story. You can just make one up."

Lizzie thought a minute. "A story, huh?" The little girl nodded her head enthusiastically. "Okay, I'll try..."

"You have to start it with 'Once upon a Time'," Natalie informed her.

"Okay... Once upon a time, in a land very far away, there lived a prince."

"Oooh, I like princes! Keep going!"

"Well, there was a prince. But there was also an evil queen, and this evil queen didn't like the prince, so she decided to put an evil spell on him to make him forget who he was."

"Couldn't he just ask somebody who he was?"

"No, he couldn't, because not only did the evil queen make him forget who he was, but she also sent him far, far away where he didn't know anyone, and no one knew him either."

"That wasn't very nice."

"No, it wasn't. So this prince wandered through the far away land, not knowing who he was for a very, very long time. He was very lonely, but he didn't remember where his home was or that people missed him there so he decided to stay in the far away land forever and try to make other people happy instead."

"How did he do that?"

"He played funny tricks on people, and told funny stories, and did funny things that made them laugh. So he made a lot of people happy, but he was still sad because he was lost. One day, he met a girl who was sad and lost, too, so he decided to try and help her find her way home so that she could be happy again."

"That was a very nice thing to do."

"Yes, he was a very nice person, even though most people thought he was just silly. He took her to a friend of his who he thought might be able to tell him how to help her get home again. His friend showed them a door to another land, far, far away, and he told the prince that he should ask the people there if they knew how to help his friend. So they went through the door."

"What was on the other side?" asked Natalie.

"A forest. A forest so deep and dark that it seemed to go on forever. They traveled a long ways until a cat stopped them and asked them where they were going."

"A cat? Was it a magical cat?"

"Oh, yes, this cat could float in the air, and disappear, and talk. So the cat told them that they needed to talk to another person. A Hatter."

"Oh! Like the Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!"

Lizzie laughed. "Quite like that, yes. The prince didn't realize it, but the Hatter was actually his long lost brother who had thought he was dead all these years. He thought that the evil queen had killed the prince. The Hatter was very glad to see his brother again, but the prince didn't know who he was and because the Hatter was a little crazy, so he wasn't sure he _wanted_ to know him. Together, the Hatter, the prince, and the girl all went to visit the good queen. She said she could help the prince remember who he was, but that he would have to go on a long journey before the potion she gave him would give him his memories back."

"Why would he need to do that?"

"That's a very good question," Lizzie mused. "I'm not sure that he did, but he and the girl set off on the journey anyway. And on the journey, they fell in love."

"Oh! So he's not lonely anymore! Are they going to get married and live happily ever after?"

"I'm not there, yet. So anyway, he finally drank the potion and remembered who he was. But he was very sad because now he remembered the evil queen and how mean she had been to him, and he didn't want to make the girl sad, too, so he decided to send her home instead of letting her stay with him."

"What? That's not fair!"

"No, it wasn't fair, but he was just trying to protect the girl because he loved her. Then, the girl found out a very sad thing. She found out that she wasn't really there, that she was really sleeping and that she would have to wake up in her own world again."

"So, was everything just a dream?"

"No, it was real, she just couldn't stay there anymore. She would have to find another way to get back after she woke up."

"But, the prince - isn't he going to stop her?"

"The cat went and told the prince that the girl had to leave. The prince realized how much he really loved her, and he decided to forget the evil queen and how mean she had been and just be happy. So he ran all the way back to the castle and told the girl he loved her and asked her to marry him when she returned. She said 'yes' and then she woke up in her own world, all alone."

"So how did she get back?"

"She found a magic mirror that took her back to his world, and they lived happily ever after."

Natalie was quiet for a minute, apparently deep in thought. She finally looked at Lizzie. "So, is Fred really a prince?"

Lizzie was dumb-founded. She didn't think she'd slipped up and used his name anywhere. "Why do you think the story's about Fred?" she asked Natalie.

"Well... once I asked Fred where he was from, and he got kind of sad and said he didn't remember . After you got hurt, he told me he had to go and help you, and that's the last time I saw him." she said. "When you see him again, will you tell him I'm glad he remembered?"

"Yes," said Lizzie, "I most definitely will."

"So... is Fred really a prince?"

Lizzie smiled at Natalie, and pointed to her heart. "He is in here," she said.

* * *

_A/N: Now click that little button that says "Review this Chapter"! lol_


	21. Green Eyed Monster

_A/N: Thank you so much for the awesome reviews! This story is almost finished and then there will be a sequel...  
_

* * *

"_I love you -  
I've loved you all along.  
And I miss you,  
been far away for far too long.  
I keep dreaming you'll be with me  
and you'll never go..."_

-Nickleback

* * *

After Natalie had fallen asleep, Lizzie went to the kitchen and washed up their dishes from supper. There was still about half an hour to go before Mickey would get home, so she sat down on the couch and flipped on the television. She clicked absently through the channels and stopped on Wings, the only halfway decent show on. She scooted to the middle of the couch and lay her head down against the armrest. The next thing she knew, Mickey was shaking her gently awake.

"Hey, sleepy head."

She sat up with a start. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, Mickey! I didn't even feel sleepy when I lay my head down. What time is it?"

He laughed. "Don't worry, it's not that late, only about 10:30. I'd just let you sleep, but you didn't look very comfortable."

"No, not particularly." She stood up and rubbed at the crick in her neck. "I'd better go, my mother's going to wonder what happened to me."

"I'll walk you back," he said opening the door for her.

"I don't think I'll get lost," she laughed.

They walked slowly across the yard, neither of them saying anything until halfway across Mickey stopped and turned to her.

"You know, you should stand up to your mom."

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "It's not a question of standing up to her, Mickey. It's a question of making it though the day with my sanity. It's hard to explain if you've never lived with her."

"How long are you planning on staying with her?"

"Hopefully not that long at all," she said. "I wouldn't be there at all if she hadn't of moved me out of my apartment."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I helped moved your stuff, but only because she was just going to have someone come and get rid of it all."

"Thanks, Mickey. I know it probably wasn't easy to be around her."

"Well, your mom's still scary, but I can handle it," he said. "By the way, though, what was with all the broken mirrors in the bedroom? There was glass everywhere!"

Lizzie gasped in amazement. Mickey, unknowingly, had just given her incontrovertible evidence that she hadn't been dreaming. Not that she didn't believe it was real, but to have actual proof that she and Fred had been together made her all that more anxious to get back to him. She smiled at Mickey. "I could tell you, but you wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

She shook her head. "Maybe some day." She certainly didn't need everyone thinking she was nuts right now. "So, Natalie's getting big," she said, changing the subject.

Mickey grinned. "Yeah, I know. I can't believe she'll be seven this winter. I remember when I was that young. It doesn't seem that long ago," he mused. "She's crazy about you, you know."

"She's a sweet kid," said Lizzie, smiling.

"Yes, she is. She's not the only one who's crazy about you, though." He stepped closer to her and before Lizzie could move back, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her full on the lips. She turned her head to the side, breaking the kiss and moved back, out of his arms. She scrambled for something to say that wouldn't sound horribly cold. "I'm sorry, Mickey," was all she could think of.

Even in the moonlight she could tell his embarrassment from his body language. "No, Lizzie, I'm sorry," he said, quickly. "I just...I thought there was something between us... At least there seemed to be before your accident," he added quietly.

She winced. Yes, before her accident there _did_ seem to be something between them, but today was a lifetime removed from the status quo of three weeks ago. Three weeks ago, she didn't know the things about Fred that would lead her to fall in love with her former imaginary friend. As patient and understanding as Mickey was, she thought that would be a bit too much for him to handle. "I'm truly sorry, Mickey. Things have...changed since then."

"What could have possibly changed?" he asked, confused. "You were asleep!"

She sighed, couldn't he just drop it? "Let's just say I had a revelation while I was sleeping. Listen, I'm really sorry, Mickey," she said, hoping she sounded like she meant it.

"Yeah, okay, Lizzie." He sounded defeated. "I'll see you later."

They turned their separate ways and walked away.

* * *

The next day at breakfast, Natalie told her dad the story that Lizzie had told her about Fred. (Complete with her own explanations about how Drop Dead Fred wasn't her imaginary friend anymore because he'd had to go and help Lizzie find her way home and how Lizzie had to find a magic mirror to take her back to him so they could live happily ever after.) Mickey wasn't amused. He thought about the things Lizzie had mumbled through her sleep the long nights that he'd sat with her before and after the doctor's had put her in the coma. Things began to fit together in his mind, but he didn't like the picture they made. He didn't like it one bit.

* * *

Lizzie ended up taking the bus and going to her doctor's appointment alone the next morning. Her mother had been on the phone when she came downstairs, listening intently to someone on the other end of the line, and had interrupted the caller just long enough to hand her the address of the doctor and bus fare. Lizzie found her behavior exceedingly odd, but wasn't about to complain. Even a few hours without her mother was better than nothing. She picked a seat near the back of the bus and sat down, resting her head against the window.

_["Hey, what are you up to?"]_

_["Guard duty."]_

_["Guard duty? What are you guarding?"]_

_["Not much at the moment, but there always has to be someone stationed at Marmoreal's front gate so I thought I'd earn my keep."]_

She grinned, trying to imagine Fred having to stand in one place for more than 30 seconds._ ["Sounds boring."]_

_["It is. What are you doing?"]_

_["Going to the doctor."]_

_["Which one? It's not the green pill doctor is it?"]_ he asked, nervously.

_["No, silly, just the regular one, to take the cast off my arm... My mom was acting weird this morning."]_

_["I'd be more surprised if she was acting normal. Why, what did she do?"]_

_["She was on the phone and then just handed me bus fare and shuffled me out the door without her. You know my mom, that's not normal. It kinda gave me the creeps."]_

Fred_ did_ know her mother. Well enough to know that Polly Cronin sending her daughter off on the bus, (which her mother considered to be beneath herself to set foot on), to the doctor no less (where she would normally try to take charge over Lizzie's welfare), was out of character for her.

_["You need to be careful, Lizzie. You didn't tell anyone that you're having conversations in your head with Drop Dead Fred, did you?"]_

_["Of course not, I don't want to get sent to the loony bin!"]_

_["You know they stick electrodes in your brain there and fry them like eggs."]_

She laughed, causing the person across the aisle from her look over. _ ["I don't think they do that anymore. I think now days you have a choice of sedation or 'lobotomization'."]_

_["I don't think that's a real word, but I like it,"] he said, amused._

_["Thanks, I made it up myself."]_

There was a pause._ ["Lizzie..."]_ Fred's tone changed and Lizzie knew the next thing he said wouldn't be joking.

_["Yes?"]_

_["I miss you."] _He couldn't even describe how much his heart ached for her.

She sighed. _ ["I miss you, too."]_

* * *

Fred glanced up to see his brother, Tarrant, walking towards him. Neither said anything, Tarrant merely came and stood beside him and crossed his arms, looking off into the distance beyond the castle. Fred sighed, he might as well get it over with.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

His brother looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "Tha's a pretty piss poor apology, but I s'pose I should feel lucky you're here to be tellin' me it at all."

"Want me t' take it back?"

"Nay, tha's fine."

Both stood, unspeaking, for a moment until Fred asked, "What was in the red vial?"

"Wha' d'ya' mean?"

"You know what I mean. The red bottle ya had with ya. What was it?"

Tarrant smiled. "Water."

"Figures."

A companionable silence fell over the brothers, together watching the traders make their way up the long road from the Tulgey Wood into Marmoreal.

* * *

She waited impatiently as the saw cut through the layers of plaster surrounding her arm and elbow. Finally the doctor broke away the cast to reveal a limb in much need of exercise and sunlight. That wasn't what Lizzie was interested in, though. She looked at her left hand...and wasn't disappointed. There on her ring finger was not a ring, but the shadow of the ring she wore somewhere in another place and time. A dark brown discoloration in her skin encircled the finger. The doctor noticed it as well.

"That's odd, " he said, looking at her hand closely. "Did you have a ring on when you were in your accident?"

"No, I didn't."

"Hmm..." He shrugged, confused. "Well, sometimes people bruise in strange places and patterns. I'm sure it's harmless."

"I think it's pretty neat," she said, examining it.

* * *

Lizzie took the bus back to her mother's house, the smile on her face never dimming.

[_Hey, guess what?_] she thought as she walked the block home from the bus stop.

_[What?]_

_[The ring...you can tell where it is. There's a brown shadow of it around my finger.]_

_[Really? I guess that explains why you can still hear me.]_

_[The doctor thought it was a bruise.]_

_[Isn't that a weird place for a bruise?]_

_[I don't think he knew what to make of it otherwise. He seemed a little perplexed.]_

Fred laughed. _ [Hurry up and find a mirror so you can perplex them even more.]_

_[I'm trying, I'm...,]_ she groaned, Mickey was one her mother's porch swing. _[Crap.]_

_[What? What's wrong?]_

Lizzie sighed. _ ["Mickey's waiting to talk to me."]_

_["Why?"] _Fred asked irritably.

_["Probably because I told him to 'piss off' last night. In not so many words."]_

_["That's my girl! Wish I could have been there."]_

_["I'm sure if you had been, he wouldn't be talking to me today."] _He probably wouldn't be talking _at all_, she thought to herself. As she neared the porch, she noticed that Mickey didn't get up as he normally would have. In fact, he looked rather...upset. It made her nervous.

_["Kick him for me."]_

_["Hush, he looks...mad. That's odd."]_

Mickey looked up at her, serious and unsmiling. "Have a seat...please," he said indicating the swing.

Lizzie looked at him, confused. She knew she'd embarrassed him last night, but he certainly hadn't seemed _angry_ about it. She felt an urge to just run off the porch and never come back. "I think I'll stand," she said. "What's this about?"

"It's about Natalie." He looked up at her with a seriousness she'd never seen him have before. "You told her a very interesting story last night."

It was Lizzie's turn to be thrown for a loop. That was the last thing she'd ever thought about...Natalie retelling her fairytale about Fred to Mickey. She wished she had a way of finding out exactly what she'd said. She decided to be obscure. "Oh yeah? Which one?"

She jumped as he slammed his fist down on the seat of the swing. "Damn it, Lizzie – don't play ignorant with me. You know perfectly well what you told my daughter."

"I just told her a story, Mickey," she said, evenly. She stared him down, unwilling to show him just how nervous he was making her.

He stood up and she took a step back from him. "You know, I kept thinking all last night about what you said - about how something changed between us while you were sleeping. Then this morning, Natalie explained it all for me," His eyes fixed on her, as cold as steel. "This is about those crazy dreams you kept having, isn't it? This is about _Fred_."

Lizzie's heart jumped, and her blood seemed to turn to ice in her veins. "What are you talking about?" she whispered.

"The dreams, Lizzie, before you woke up in the hospital. You kept rattling on and on about Fred and how much you _loved_ him," he practically spat the word out. "I ought to know what you were dreaming, I heard it every night for two weeks!"

Lizzie was done talking. "I've got to go, Mickey. My mom's going to be wondering where I am." She turned and walked towards the door.

"You think it's real, don't you?" he called after her. She turned back to look at him, but said nothing. "That's why you were looking for mirrors, wasn't it?" He took a deep breath and said in a much calmer, almost saddened voice, "It wasn't, Lizzie. The doctor told us that patients in induced comas can have dreams that are so vivid that they think they were real when they wake up. They can even hear voices in their head."

"I wasn't just a dream, Mickey. I was here and nobody could see me. Not your sister, not my mother, nobody – only Fred. The mirrors at my apartment – I broke one because it freaked me out that I didn't make a reflection, and Fred broke the other one before I looked into it. That's why there was glass everywhere." She held up her left hand. "This isn't a bruise – it's a shadow of what is really there, somewhere."

Mickey shook his head, unwilling to accept any proof that what she was saying was actually true. "It's not real! You've taken things that have happened and twisted them together into some bizarre fairy tale."

Lizzie stared intensely at him a moment and said quietly, "I don't care what you or anyone else thinks. If I'm crazy, I'd rather be crazy and love him and believe he loves me than be sane and know it wasn't real."

"Look, Lizzie, I admit, there were a lot of weird things that happened when you were a kid that can't be explained unless Fred was real, at least on some level, but if what you're saying is true, that means he knew you when you were a child. Do you know how creepy that sounds?"

She supposed she understood how he could think that was strange. "He's actually younger than I am now," she said, softly, more to herself than Mickey, "he's just lived a lot longer."

"I really think you need to tell the doctor about all of this," he pressed. "It isn't normal. You need to get some help."

She laughed and shook her head. "You may think I'm crazy, but I'm not going out of my way to make everyone else think I am, too. I'm happy, Mickey, can't you just leave it at that?"

He stared quietly at her, and Lizzie thought he was probably weighing the choice of her sanity versus her happiness – and perhaps _his_ happiness. "You'd better go inside," he said, finally.

"Yeah..." She turned the knob and entered her mother's house. Mickey followed her in and shut the door, locking it behind them. Her heart raced frantically. In the foyer stood her mother, Dr. Ryland, and four nurses in white scrubs. One was the freaky, black-belt nurse she remembered from her last encounter with the doctor with the green pills.

"What's going on?" she whispered.

_["Lizzie, what's going on?"] _

Frightened tears began to form in her eyes. "What's going on?" she cried to her mother.

_["Lizzie! Talk to me! What's wrong? What's happening?"_] Fred could feel her trembling with fear.

Polly Cronin looked at her stoically. "We've been worried about you for quite a while, Elizabeth. When Mickey called this morning and told me about the crazy things you told his daughter and the trips you've been taking looking for magic mirrors, I knew something had to be done about it."

Lizzie spun around, facing Mickey. "You told my _mother_?" She advanced on him angrily, fire in her eyes. "You _bastard_!" she screamed. "I can't believe you told my freaking crazy mother about him!" She slapped him - hard. Two of the nurses came up behind her and grabbed her arms, restraining her.

Fred was beside himself with worry. Why wasn't she answering him? A new emotion now flew through her to him – betrayal. _["Lizzie,"] _he pleaded,_ ["please - talk to me!"]_

_["Mickey told her! The bastard told my moth-..."]_

That was as far as she got. Dr. Ryland jabbed a syringe of Haldol in her carotid artery and pressed the plunger down. Lizzie collapsed, unconscious, into the nurses arms.

In Fred's mind, the part that was Lizzie's fell silent.

_

* * *

A/N: About Lizzie and Fred's ages – I figure Lizzie was about seven when Fred got shut up in the jack-in-the-box and then the movie says '21 years later', so that would put her around 28. Freddie was 24 on Horunvendush day and only spent about a year mortal after that, so that would put him physically at around 25-26, even through he's lived much longer. In reality, he should be around 40 if he hadn't lost the 15 years that he was gone from Underland. That would fit with why Tarrant is so much older in the movie, even though I've put him only 2 years older than Freddie growing up. That's how Lizzie ends up being physically older than Fred._


	22. Through the Looking Glass

"_I'm looking at you through the glass -  
don't know how much time has passed,  
all I know is that it feels like forever.  
But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home,  
sitting all alone inside your head."_

-Stone Sour

* * *

_["Lizzie! ...Lizzie?"]_

There was nothing, nothing at all – not even a shadow of emotion. The part of his mind that was normally lit by Lizzie's presence was dark, and for the first time since he'd met her as a child, Fred was blind to her. In that moment, he realized what it would have been like had he never been locked in the jack-in-the-box. If Lizzie had been as every other charge had been to him – forgotten in the ocean of time. He fell to his knees, not knowing if she was alive or dead.

"What's wrong?" Tarrant knelt beside him, steading him.

His brother looked up at him, stricken. "She's gone," he whispered.

"What d'ya mean? Who's gone?"

"Lizzie! She was talking to me and something happened." He needed a way to get to her, and there was only one thing he knew to do. It wasn't a good plan, but he didn't have time to think of a better one. "I have to go! Can you finish my watch?"

"Aye, give me yer sword. What are ya goin' t' do?"

Fred unbuckled his claymore and handed it to his brother. "Dig out a rabbit hole." He took off running to the castle before Tarrant could ask him just how the heck he planned to do that.

_["Lizzie, I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm coming. Just hold on and I'll be there – as quick as I can."]_

* * *

_["Lizzie... don't know... hear me...coming...hold on and I'll be...as..."] She followed the voice, but it swirled away into the distance, like a leaf caught in the wind, over the great black cliff she found herself leaning above. Her fingers slipped, the purchase her hands had found fell away, and she tumbled down, down into the never-ending, silent darkness. _

* * *

He took the main stairs, two at a time up to the main level and then turned into the back service entrance, running down to the Great Hall. He opened the door and looked around for Mirana, spotting her at the far end. She looked up as he approached her and gave him a bright smile before taking in the expression on his face.

"What's the matter?" she asked, concerned.

"I can't tell you here," he said. "Meet me in the kitchen. I need your help with something." He left without waiting for her to answer him, making a left out of the Great Hall, up to his room.

Freddie's room had always looked more like a cross between a classroom, laboratory, and museum than a place for sleeping. Even in the short time he'd been there, it was rapidly taking on it's former persona. Being Underland, many different varies of flora had magical properties. Freddie had always taken a fair amount of personal pride in discovering some of them and had always kept a few 'useful' ones around – just in case. After Lizzie had gone back, he found himself with not much to do so he spent a few days searching out some of the things he'd always kept on hand. The first one he'd looked for was dreamwort.

Dreamwort was a wildflower; it's blue, bell shaped flowers hanging down much the same as the bluebells in Lizzie's world. Only these, when tapped gently, released a powder than would instantly put someone to sleep for about an hour, leaving them with a nasty headache when they awoke. Freddie used to sprinkle it in Tarrant's food occasionally when he was younger – just for kicks. It was the closest thing he would be able to take with him for a weapon. He grabbed the vial he'd collected off the shelf and stuck it in his pocket and threw a change of clothes into his pack before running back down to the kitchen.

Mirana was already there waiting for him.

"What's going on, Freddie? What's wrong?"

"It's Lizzie, something isn't right. I have to get up there. Look, you're going to think my plan is crazy so just don't ask, okay?"

"If you want my help," Mirana said, testily, "you're going to have to tell me what you're planning to do."

Fred grimaced. "I'm going to dig out the hole."

"What are you talking about? You can't dig it out by yourself!"

"I can with upelkuchen," he said. "There's another door that leads to the room, I can dig it out if I'm large enough."

She stared at him like he was crazy. "You're kidding, right?"

"Look, it's the best idea I've got right now, but I need you to do that charm thingy with my clothes so they'll shrink and grow with me. ...Please?"

"Fine," she sighed. "Give me the clothes. You know where the upelkuchen and pishsalver is." He tossed his change of clothes to her. "You'll need to give me your boots, too." He unlaced them and set them beside her lab table then took two squares of upelkuchen out of the cupboard and two vials of pishsalver.

"It'll probably take me the night. Send Nivens out in the morning to check on me. I need to get one more thing before I go, and it's going to be a long walk even by door."

Mirana shook her head. "Even if you're able to get to her, there's no way you're going to be able to get back to the hole without someone stopping you. I was under the impression she lived quite a ways from it."

"She does, but I'm not worried about _that_ part. Just have someone waiting by the mirror and some upelkuchen on hand."

"You're going to look for a mirror when you get there?"

"No, I_ have_ a mirror. It's just a little...small. I'll take it with me."

Mirana smiled. "That's kind of...well, that's brilliant!"

"Yeah, well, that's if I can get up there," he smirked. "Are you done, yet?"

"Just about." Mirana had been throwing 'ingredients' together in a huge pot. She gave it a stir. "Hold on a minute." She disappeared out the door for a few minutes and then came back in with a cloak, white with silver and gold threads running through it. She handed him the cloak. "For Lizzie," she said. "It's already been charmed."

He took it gratefully. "Thanks." He stuck the cloak into his pack while she popped his other clothes and boots into the pot. A 'poof' and a shower of pink sparkles burst from the vessel and Mirana took the clothes, looking no different than they did before, from the pot and handed them back to Fred. She gave him a long look. "If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, Freddie. Come back and we'll think of something else."

He met her eyes. "It'll work, Miri. It has to..."

* * *

_She was in a room - like a waiting room, only she couldn't remember what she was supposed to be waiting for. There was no door, and the walls, floor, and ceiling were all a uniform gray. She sat in a simple metal chair from which she found she had no energy to move - if there had been anywhere to move to. Occasionally there was a voice, echoing off the walls of the sparse cubicle. The tones rose and fell, perhaps forming words, perhaps not. She did not answer. Deep in her mind, she waited...and waited...and waited..._

* * *

There was a series of five doors to get back to where his cabin once stood. He'd need to pick up the mirror first. He went over the combination in his head as he ran to the first door, the one he'd taken earlier through Queast. Marmoreal to Queast, Queast to Crims, Crims to the clearing in the Tulgey Wood, then a long walk Northwest to the edge of the woods to the door to West-Central Crims, then finally Crims to his destination. He was going to have to look for more doors he decided as he finally made it halfway after two hours of walking between them. Taking four hours to get somewhere had never bothered him when he was younger and just wasting time, but now, when time was of the essence, it was killing him. Not only that, but time passed faster for Lizzie than it did for him, and without Lizzie's input he had no idea just how fast it was going. He'd neither heard nor felt anything since their last conversation. He continued to talk to her, not only for her benefit in case she could hear him, but it helped him keep his sanity.

He finally made it to Witzend. He took the chest from it's hiding place in the cave and removed the mirror, which was about 3" tall by 5" wide. In afterthought, he took the small wooden box out as well and stuck it in his pack. He went back through half of the doors until he arrived in Crims, north of the Room of Doors and then walked the rest of the way until he was back at the tree door that led into it. He changed into the clothes Mirana had charmed for him, wondering why he hadn't just worn them in the first place ,and took a small bite of the upelkuchen. He shot up about three feet. That wasn't what he had in mind. He shoved the rest of the square into his mouth and grew to about 30 feet. Upelkuchen, unlike magic mushrooms that were plentiful in the Tulgey wood, kept you proportionate. He checked his hand to make sure it would still fit through the door, and scratched gently at the packed earth. To his relief it fell away easily, but he estimated he could still be larger and bit off a small corner of the second square. This time his hand fit through perfectly with no room to spare. He knelt at the door, taking care not to squish anything underneath him.

Night was beginning to fall, and he'd forgotten a torch. He called for Chess, hoping the cat was around, but there was no answer. Thankfully there was a full moon and since the door was in a clearing, there was enough light to see.

He set to work, pulling handful after handful of dirt from the room beyond the door. The more he took out, the more seemed to fall down to replace it. He tried not to think how enormously high the hole was as he labored through the night, and the pile of dirt next to him grew to a pyramid as tall as a tree. As pinkish purple light streaked the sky, he reached a point at last where he didn't feel the earth collapse back in place. After several more handfuls, he finally raked the remaining dirt from the checkered floor of the room.

He'd set the pishsalver on a rock before he started so as to not loose it, and now he carefully uncorked the tiny (to him) bottle and drank half of the liquid. That took him down to about eight feet and one more sip had him back to normal. He walked cautiously through the door into the room and looked up. A faint point of light, no larger than a star gleamed at the top - the light of Lizzie's world.

He was so tired, but he dared not sleep. Instead he walked to the fountain that was just south of the room and washed up. Nivens was waiting for him when he returned.

"Oh my, you _have_ been busy!" said the rabbit. "I haven't been up in so long, I daresay I wouldn't know where to begin."

"That's okay, Nivens, I just need you to get me up there. I'll take care of the rest."

"Oh! Before I forget, Mirana though you might need this." He took a small pouch gold coins from around his waist and gave it to Fred. "Just in case. It's usually better to actually _purchase_ transportation than to use whatever vile trickery you might have planned," he said.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, but thanks all the same."

Freddie left the clothes he'd changed out of there in the room to retrieve later – he wouldn't be able to take his pack back through the mirror so he'd need to go as light as possible. He knelt down to Niven's level and handed the rabbit the half-empty bottle of pishsalver, keeping the full one. Reluctantly he also handed over the small wooden box. "Please put this in the chest underneath the bed in my room. _Don't _lose it."

"I do _not_ lose things," Nivens said with an offended sniff. "Are you quite ready?"

Freddie picked up his pack and took a last look around. "I'm ready, let's go."

"Take my shoulders," said the rabbit.

Fred placed his hands on Nivens shoulders and was suddenly propelled up through the tunnel as the rabbit jumped. The light which was just a dot at first steadily grew larger and larger until he was able to see clouds and the grass spilling into the hole. And then- he was there. He clambered up over the edge as the rabbit went back down. He stood up, looked around, and couldn't help but laugh. The hole, instead of being in the garden of an English manor, was now in an empty lot, flanked by a McDonald's on one side and a car wash on the other.

It had been several assignments before Lizzie's since he'd been in this country and that equaled out to approximately thirty some-odd years by his guess, though this was the first time he'd been "real" here. It was a little daunting. There was a bank nearby and he walked in and exchanged his gold coins for currency (raising several eyebrows in the process), unsure if he could get anywhere with the other. He took a cab to the airport and boarded the quickest flight into the United States. He'd need to catch another one when he got there, but he wasn't sitting around in an airport for three hours waiting for something closer. He desperately wished he could just pop in and out again.

* * *

Gradually, the fog lifted, the walls of the gray room faded away, and Lizzie found herself sitting in her own room. The nurse noticed that she was lucid.

"It's time for your next dose, Ms. Cronin. Dr. Ryland thinks it will be some time before you're ready to join the 'real' world again." She took a syringe and a vial from a small metal case, and stuck the needle into the vial as she tipped it upside down, drawing the clear liquid into it. Lizzie shrank back as she approached her, but her arms and legs wouldn't move and there was nowhere to go. She fought desperately to clear her mind as the nurse injected her arm.

_["FRED!"] _she shouted through her mind, over and over – screaming his name aloud as she felt herself slipping back down.

"There's no one to help you _here_, darlin'," said the nurse.

_["Lizzie! I'm coming..."]_

She heard neither.

* * *

When Lizzie had called to him, Fred had finally been able to get his bearings on where she was. He'd been afraid she wouldn't be at her mother's house and he'd have no way but luck of finding her. He tried not to remember the anguish in her screams as they'd echoed through his mind. He stopped as he neared the house, pulling out the bottle of dreamwort – he wasn't messing around with anyone who got in his way. He dumped about a teaspoon worth of the powder into his left palm and stuck the bottle back in his pocket. He took a deep breath and was almost to the front steps when he was interrupted.

"Hey you! Wait!"

He knew that voice. The person it belonged to was running up behind him. He spun around, the anger and hatred on his face causing Mickey to stop short.

"Hey, who are you?" demanded Mickey. "Tell me what's going on in there!" After the doctor had knocked Lizzie out the previous morning, he'd been sent away. No one would answer his questions or let him in.

Fred advanced on him and with one punch landed Mickey flat on his back. "I'm not sure what you did," he said, looking down at him, "but I'm fairly sure you deserved that." He knelt beside Mickey and grabbed a handful of his straw colored hair, pulling his face up to look at him. "I'm Fred, and you'd better start talking. What's happened to Lizzie?"

"You're Fred? As in Drop Dead Fred?" Mickey's face had turned as white as a sheet. "Oh my gosh, you're real!"

"No shit, Sherlock. Where's Lizzie?"

"I...I swear I didn't have any idea what her mother was planning to do," he exclaimed, frantically. "They told me they were just going to talk to her, about getting counseling! Then the doctors injected her with something and she passed out and they haven't let me in since! I swear I didn't know, please don't hurt me..."

Fred dropped Mickey's head in disgust. "Useless, as always." He climbed the stairs to the porch and knocked on the door. A voice he didn't recognize came from the other side.

"I'm sorry, sir, the Cronins are not taking visitors today."

"The hell they're not!" He kicked the door open so hard the frame nearly broke in half. He didn't wait for the nurse on the other side to say anything else, he merely blew through his left fist into her face. The dreamwort hit her full force, and she fell down, asleep instantly. He took the bottle out of his pocket and dumped more in his palm, just in case he needed it later.

As much as he wanted to run up the stairs, he needed to check and make sure there were no more nurses around. He went first into the dining room and yanked the phone cord out of the wall, just for good measure. He'd gone nearly all the way around the first floor when he got the feeling he was being followed. He spun around just in time to catch Polly Cronin about to brain him with a baseball bat. He grabbed her wrist, twisting it around behind her as she dropped the bat.

"Who are you?" she grunted. "What are you doing here?"

He leaned over her shoulder, and whispered, "Oh, you know who I am – and I sure as _hell_ know who you are, bitch. I'm Drop Dead Fred. You've had you're little reunion with Lizzie and screwed it up again for the last time. Now she's_ mine_."

She made some inarticulate sound, and Fred opened his left hand, blowing the powder in her face. He stepped over her unconscious form and headed up the stairs. There was one nurse asleep in a chair in the corner of the pink bedroom. He made sure she wouldn't wake up for a while with the last of his powder and then turned his attention to the other person in the room.

She was propped in a wheelchair, leather restraints buckled around her wrists and ankles and one around her chest, holding her somewhat upright in the seat. Her hair was sweaty and he brushed it back where it was plastered against her face.  
"Oh, Lizzie...what have they done to you?" Gently, Fred unbuckled all the restraints and caught her as she fell forward, still unconscious, into his arms.

Unbeknownst to Fred, Mickey had followed him up the stairs and watched from the doorway as Fred tenderly swept her hair back from her face and freed her, and as he did, he knew why Lizzie had wanted to go back to Fred – to this man who obviously loved her so deeply. Mickey knew he had never stood a chance.

"Will she be okay?" he asked Fred.

Fred didn't bother to look at him. "She will if I can get her home." He signed unhappily – he really needed another hand. He couldn't reach his pack while he was holding Lizzie. There was no way Fart-pants was touching her, so instead he said, "I need some help. Can you reach inside my pack and give me the cloak and the mirror in it?"

"Sure." Mickey was only too relieved to be asked to help, guilt was gnawing a hole inside of him. He unbuckled the pack and pulled out the white cloak and a small mirror. "What are you going to do?"

Fred didn't answer him, just took the cloak and fastened the clasp around Lizzie's neck, trying his best to wrap it all the way around her. The mirror he sat up against the wall. "Alright, now hand me the bottle with the liquid in it."

"What is it?"

"Shut up and do what I say."

Mickey handed him the pishsalver. Fred uncorked it, leaned Lizzie's head back, and poured a small amount in. He shut her mouth and waited until she swallowed. She immediately shrunk down to about two feet tall. Mickey nearly fainted. Carefully, Fred poured another sip into her mouth and waited. She shrunk down to about two inches until she fit into the palm of his hand. He sat her down gently on the floor in front of the mirror.

"Fred," said Mickey. "When she wakes up, will you tell her I'm sorry... I'm sorry that I didn't believe her?"

"On one condition."

"Name it."

"When we're gone, take the mirror and the pishsalver - that's the liquid, and destroy them both."

"I will."

Fred nodded, "I'll tell her." He took two quick sips of the pishsalver and shrank down to Lizzie's size. He picked her up in his arms and together they disappeared through the mirror.


	23. Journey's End

A/N: Dear Reader... I want to thank you for sticking with this story to the end. It warms my heart every time that stat clicker shows one more reaching Chapter 23. Many - _many_- hours were spent laboring over each facet of plot, character, and turn of phrase, and in return I ask humbly that you leave a review. Whether you are a person of few words or of many, each reader's insight is valuable to me.

**The sequel to this story is called "_Memories of You"_ and can be found on my profile page or the DDF section.** More adventures with Fred and Lizzie in Underland.

* * *

Chapter 23: Journey's End

_"Long, long journey  
out of nowhere,  
long, long way to go;  
but what are sighs  
and what is sadness  
to the heart that's coming home?"_  
-Enya

* * *

The one thing he'd forgotten about was the four inch frame surrounding the large mirror. Mirana had remembered and had set up a ledge at the base that met up with the bottom of the actual mirror. Fred walked through, Lizzie safely in his arms, and the footman Mirana had set to keep watch left to alert her of their presence. He sat down, still holding Lizzie, making sure the cloak was wrapped around her tightly. Fred raised her up so that her head rested beneath his chin. He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent. It was then that it hit him – how close he had come to losing her. He closed his eyes and concentrated instead on her being there, with him in his arms in Underland, before his emotions could get the best of him.

Mirana entered the room a few minutes later, followed by Alice, Tarrant, and two other women that he recognized as healers but didn't remember their names. He had almost forgotten that he and Lizzie were only about two inches tall. Mirana knelt down to his level.

"They gave her something," he said. "I don't know how long she's been asleep, but I've only felt her awake once since yesterday morning."

Mirana placed her hand beside him, palm up. "We'll take care of her, Freddie. She'll be fine." Fred didn't make any motions of letting her go. "You need to give her to me," Mirana said, softly. "I can't help her here, and you haven't slept in two days."

"I'm fine, I'll come with you."

"No," she said, sternly, "you will not. You'll either sleep voluntarily or I can find something to knock you out. I'll stay with her myself - Alice, as well." Alice nodded an affirmative. "I give you my word that no more harm will come to her. She'll be here when you wake up."

Still reluctant to let her go, Freddie lay Lizzie in the queen's outstretched hand, and she and the healers left the room, taking the tiny Lizzie with them. Alice handed Fred two large crumbs of upelkuchen which he ate and returned to his normal size.

Tarrant put his arm around Fred's shoulders. "Come on little brother, you look like you might walk into a wall if you don't lay down soon," he lisped.

"Don't talk like that to me – you sound like ma'," he complained. Tarrant pushed him out the door towards his room.

Six hours later, Freddie found Mirana. "I slept. Where is she?"

Mirana looked him over disapprovingly. "She's sleeping – normal sleep," she corrected, quickly. "You've walked all over Underland, dug out a rabbit hole, and wandered around in Lizzie's world. You're not seeing anyone until you're more presentable than you are now. I'll have a bath drawn for you. Get cleaned up and then come see me."

Fred rolled his eyes. "Yes, your Majesty."

"Don't patronize me. You're a mess."

Fred left and headed for the men's lavatory, sulking, though he knew Mirana was right. He cleaned up and dressed, but stopped as he passed the mirror. He ran his hands through his damp hair. It was strange to see himself - he'd spend decades never making a reflection at all. Now, he was real again. He was home. Lizzie woke and he smiled as he felt her presence once again. She was _here,_ in his world – real, not just a dream anymore. He sensed her confusion, but someone must have been there with her because he was suddenly flooded with happiness through her.

_["Where are you?"]_ she thought to him.

_["I'm coming, but I have to find you first."]_

_["There's an apple tree out the window."]_

_["There's apple trees all around us."]_

_["I can see the front gate from the window."]_

_["That helps. I'm coming."] _ He ran to the eastern wing and wondered if maybe she was in the same room she'd been in before. It was an easy find – he just looked for the room with the footmen outside it. As he approached the door, one of them turned inside, and Alice came out with him and closed the door behind her. She smiled when she saw Freddie.

"You look better," she quipped. She walked off down the hallway, leaving him alone with the footmen standing guard outside.

His hand felt sweaty as he turned the doorknob. He opened it a crack and peered in. She was standing in front of the window, turned away from him, looking out. Her hair was long again he noticed and she wore a cream colored dress with gold and silver trim.

_["You look like an angel."]_

She spun around, beaming at him. "Fred..."

He crossed the room and wrapped her in a fierce embrace.

"Am I still dreaming or am I really here?" she asked.

He leaned back to look her in the eyes. "You're really here, Lizzie. Whole and completely – here." He ran his fingers through her hair. "How do you feel?" he asked.

"I feel fine," she said. "I feel like I've missed something, but no different otherwise."

"Do you remember what happened?"

She looked away worriedly and shook her head. "The last thing I remember is walking home from the bus stop."

"That's alright," he said. "I'm sure nothing happened that you'd want to remember anyway."

"That bad, huh?"

He shrugged. "Well, the Mega-beast and Fart-pants know I'm real now. Maybe they'll sign up for a group counseling session."

"You'll have to tell me the story...later." She leaned into him and kissed him passionately, pulling him closer to her.

Fred pulled back and grinned at her. "I don't think this is the time or the place for this," he said, nodding towards the footmen and the open door. "Besides, there's something to be taken care of before something steals you away from me again."

She shook her head. "Never again," she vowed.

"Let's hope not." He took her hand, pulling her after him. "Come on, we have to find my brother."

"Why do we need your brother?"

"You'll see."

Fred led Lizzie though the halls of Marmoreal until they stopped outside Tarrant's workshop. Freddie banged on the door. Something crashed to the floor inside and a curse in some language Lizzie couldn't understand erupted from within. The door finally flew open. Tarrant looked at the two of them, confused and a bit...unkempt.

"Is there somethin' I can help ya wit'?"

"Are you havin' a problem," Freddie asked, peering around the door, "or can we come in?"

"Do you need a hat?"

"It's a personal matter."

Tarrant sighed and opened the door completely. Alice, looking a bit flushed, greeted them as they entered.

Fred looked at his brother and then at Alice, realizing belatedly that he might have interrupted something. Ah, well, too late now, he thought. "Good," he said, pointing to Alice, "she can be a witness."

"A witness to what?" Tarrant asked, suspiciously.

"We need you to marry us."

"What! I'm not qualified for that. I'm happy for ya', but go talk t' Mirana."

"No way," said Fred, "she'll make us wait a month and fuss over everything. You're the clan elder, you can do a handfasting."

"I'm not an elder."

Freddie was prepared for all his arguments. "You and I are the only one's left and you're older, so I hereby proclaim you the clan elder. Congratulations...now stop griping and marry us."

"I don' have a proper ban t' bind yer hands with."

"That's just traditional. You can use anything." He went over to the curtains. They were the same style as in all the rooms. He untied the red cord that held them back and pulled it out. "Here," he said, tossing it to Tarrant.

Lizzie laughed. "I suppose that's appropriate," she said as Fred grinned at her. Tarrant decided he really didn't want to know why.

"Fine, but I'll hav t' find th' book. I don' know what I'm supposed t' say."

"Good grief, Tarrant, didn't ya' go to enough of them when we were growing up to remember? It's not that complicated," he said as his brother sifted through dusty tomes, looking for the right one.

"Some of us had better things to do than memorize poetry. Here it is, give me a minute t' look at it."

"Hear that, Lizzie? We have one minute."

"We shouldn't waste it."

Fred took her in his arms and kissed her soundly. "Got it yet?" asked Fred.

"Aye...would ya' stop that!" Tarrant glanced quickly over the page. "This isn't really a proper ceremony with only one witness, so I suppose we can skip all the introductions."

"Just read the important parts," complained Fred, impatiently. He smiled at Lizzie.

_["You still want to do this, right?"]_

She bit her lip and grinned at him. _ ["Yes, of course I do. I can't very well have someone else stealing you away."]_

_["That wouldn't happen...We've been through a lot together, haven't we?"]_

_["Yes, we have – but that's just the beginning."]_

Fred pulled the small wooden box from his pocket and removed the two silver rings inside.

"I though you'd lost those," said Tarrant.

Fred glared at him. "What do you take me for – an idiot?" He handed the larger one to Lizzie. "Put your promise ring on your other hand," he told her as he did the same.

"Pay attention," said Tarrant. "I'm only doin' this once. In fact, we'll just do this t' fast way an' y' can both repeat it at th' same time. Put th' rings on each others fingers." Tarrant read from the book and Lizzie and Fred repeated him together after each line.

"_Just as this circle is without end, my love for you has no end.  
Just as the ring endures, my commitment to you will never fail.  
With this ring I take you to be my trusted confidant and partner for life." _

He picked up the red cord. "Um...okay, I think ya' join yer left hands together."

"Don't sound so excited." said Fred, sarcastically. He took Lizzie's hand in his.

Tarrant glanced up at him. "I'm doin' m' best. I can find Mirana if ya' like." Tarrant tied their hands together with the cord. "Ya' ken yer sposed' t' keep it tied 'till..."

"Just get on with it."

"Alright...after me again, like last time...

_ Today I recognize you as my soul-mate  
And ask that you become a part of me, in sacred kinship.  
With you, I have lost all fear and have found the greatest courage.  
I have learned to love and let myself be loved.  
With you, I have found a rhythm of grace and gracefulness.  
Love has reawakened in my life; a rebirth; a new beginning.  
With you I am understood,  
I am home. " _

Lizzie smiled at Fred._ [I am home.] _

He rested his forehead against hers. _[Yes, you are.]_

_[It's been a long journey.]_

_[Yes, it has.]_

Neither Fred nor Lizzie noticed Alice slip from the room into the corridor.

"Almost done," said Tarrant. He turned the page in the book and read:

"_Made to measure, wrought to bind,  
blessed be, these lives entwined.  
What you have here done together with one another, let no one break apart.  
May you be blessed with health, prosperity, and fruitfulness,  
from this day forth and forevermore.  
So may it be."_

Tarrant looked up. "Congratulations. Now go kiss yer bride..._somewhere else_."

Fred pulled Lizzie, her hand still bound with his, out the door. News somehow traveled faster than average in Marmoreal, and if Mirana found him now, Freddie knew he'd never hear the end of it.

_["Where are we going?"]_ asked Lizzie.

_["I don't know, yet, but if Mirana finds us, we're never gonna get any peace."]_

They rounded the corner to the upstairs section where Fred's room was – and saw two footmen and a courtier waiting by his door.

"Crap."

"Why do we have to stay here in the castle?" Lizzie asked.

Fred turned to her, a slow smile spread across his face. "Where do you want to go?"

"I don't care...wherever you are."

He thought for a minute. "Come on, let's see if we can make it to the door."

They left the castle by the service entrance and ran down towards the door, only to find two courtiers stationed in the vicinity (Mirana couldn't see the door, but she knew where it was). Fred led Lizzie around the north side of the castle. There was one other door that was close to them – he just didn't want to use it. Oh, hell, he thought, at least Lizzie was with him. Surely it wouldn't be as bad as if she wasn't.

_["There's another door, close to the rear of the castle."]_

_["Lead the way."]_

They made it to the woods behind the castle and after another fifteen minutes or so of walking, Lizzie saw the door carved into the tree.

"That's really neat how it's part of the tree," she said, "who do you think made the doors?"

Fred looked at her, confused. "You can see it?"

"Did I forget to tell you that? Yeah, ever since we used the promise rings."

"Well that makes things interesting."

She opened it up and stepped through – into a field of wheat nearly as tall as her shoulders. There was nothing as far as her eyes could see, save a small clump of trees far to her left. She turned to Fred and was surprised by the expression on his face. He looked...haunted. He glanced around quickly, as though expecting something to pounce out at him. Something he'd told her came to her mind. Her heart began to pound in her chest. The wheat field...the trees far off...his expression.

"Freddie," she said quietly, "where are we?"

"We're in Queast," he whispered.

She walked over and stood in front of him. "This was the door, wasn't it? This is _that_ place."

He knew what she meant. "Yes." He closed his eyes and sighed. "There's nothing but bad memories in this place."

"Then maybe we should stop here," she said, running her unbound hand through his hair.

He opened his eyes and looked at down at her. "And do what?"

She tilted his face down to hers. "And make some better memories..."

Her kiss was all the convincing he needed.

* * *

_**Epilogue**_

* * *

Over half a world away from the lovers, a woman with crimson hair stood watching as the foundation of a new fortress was marked off. The Outlanders had been most willing subjects, with only a little help from her craft. They worked tirelessly, believing promises that had not been made for keeping. She smiled to herself. The mountains meant to exile her would be a key advantage when the time came.

A tall man with stringy black hair, a patch covering one eye, and a great scar came to stand by her.

"Your majesty," he began, "there are reports from our spies at Marmoreal."

The woman looked up quickly at him, "Yes? What is happening?"

"The girl... the Upland girl – she has returned."

"How the devil did she do _that_?"

"That I'm not certain of." He paused, reluctant to continue. "There is more, my queen."

"What? I'm not getting any younger – spit it out."

"Apparently she's married Freddie Hightopp."

Iracebeth's first reaction was anger, but then a thoughtful look crossed her face. "Did she now?"

"Yes...I'm, um, sorry, your majesty. I know you were quite...interested... in his help at one time."

She waved his comment away. "No matter... This could prove useful, Stayne."

"How so, my queen?"

"Give them a few months. Let them get cozy and play house for a while." She smiled, cryptically. "My ideas are getting better all the time..."

* * *

_Author's Note: The wedding vows and everything else in italics were taken directly from a traditional Medieval Scottish handfasting ceremony. Long, long ago, there weren't very many clergy around to perform weddings so they were allowed to have a "handfasting" that served as a legal marriage (if it was consummated afterwards, if not it was merely a formal betrothal)._

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